The phenomenon of technology's impact on social interaction is observed over time in Bill Osgerby's Youth Media. Bill examines the affect of technology not just presently, but how it's changed over time and how that's effected everyone in every generation. From the introduction of jukebox that influenced a dancing frenzy that lit up the social scene like no other, to the iPod that encourages headphones and limited interactions with others, Osgerby really puts a sense of time on the social media aspect. I, for one, was fascinated by the way social media has changed everybody, not just the present day adolescents. I tend to overlook that technology at one time was just a TV, a radio, a landline telephone. To me those are just everyday pieces of life, not some super-awesome thing you race your friends to get. It was cool to see how it's played over time.
A study by Betsy Diane Anderson called How Social Networks Influence Attitudes: Social and Informational Effects of Attitude Heterogeneity and Argument tested the power of various social sites based on how the worked. Some were assigned to a site where most people agreed with their posts, and others were assigned to sites where some would disagree. However, the students thought they were interacting with others but in reality they were just talking with computer-generated messages.
Another writer, David Buckingham, looks at social media and the youth with a new perspective in Reading Audiences: Young People and the Media. Instead of viewing the youth as victims of the media and what it's doing to them, he takes the approach of seeing how they are put in front of it and what kind of world we live in that we'd want to view that. It was a new study that I've never really seen before; most other things you read always portray the youth as victims of this new society. It was quite fascinating to see a different angle.
