Keeping up with The Times: The "app gap"

I logged on to blog and what do you know?! I never posted this little screed on the "app gap." Give a hint of what a terrific couple of weeks it has been here in the land of 2 academic careers + 2 kiddos = 2 much 2 handle.

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At the moment, I am standing at the corner of Conference Paper Hell and Grading Nightmare, but of course, I have had my attention diverted.

StraightMan tells me last night that I ought to blog about this article in the NYT: "Screen Time Higher Than Ever For Toddlers." The article reports on a new study from the American Academy of Pediatrics:

Despite the American Academy of Pediatrics’ longstanding recommendations to the contrary, children under 8 are spending more time than ever in front of screens, according to a study scheduled for release Tuesday.

The report also documents for the first time an emerging “app gap” in which affluent children are likely to use mobile educational games while those in low-income families are the most likely to have televisions in their bedrooms.

The article then goes on to quote a survey researcher who notes that "parents increasingly are handing their iPhones to their 1 ½-year-old kid as a shut-up toy. And parents who check their e-mail three times on the way to the bus stop are constantly modeling that behavior, so it’s only natural the kids want to use mobile devices too.”

That, to me, is the problem that ought to be the concern here. Instead, the term "app gap" seems to problematize that children from lower income households have unequal (less) access to apps.

The article quotes parents who download apps for their kids, justifying the amount of screen time that they permit:

"I’ll lie to myself that these are skill builders,’” said his father, Keith Lender, who has downloaded dozens of tablet and smart phone apps for Jaden and his 1-year-old brother, Dylan. “No, I’m not lying,” he said, correcting himself. “Jaden’s really learning hand-eye coordination from the golf game, and it beats the hell out of sitting and watching television.”

I find it interesting that this parent both expresses awareness of the criticisms about whether or not screen time is building skills - then repeats the claim about hand-eye coordination that has floated in public discourse since every 6th grader I knew (except me) had an Atari game system at home. In a moment of resignation, he remarks that at least he is not letting his kids watch television. Which BTW the AAP reports is the dominant medium in lower income households.

I leave open the possibility that screen time involving apps might be qualitatively "better" than TV, but you will need to convince me. (Dadgumit, I am a scientist!)

Look, even the nation's chief technologists are not convinced, as the NYT also reported, in an article on the Silicon Valley school of choice - a Waldorf school (!):

The chief technology officer of eBay sends his children to a nine-classroom school here. So do employees of Silicon Valley giants like Google, Apple, Yahoo and Hewlett-Packard.

But the school’s chief teaching tools are anything but high-tech: pens and paper, knitting needles and, occasionally, mud. Not a computer to be found. No screens at all. They are not allowed in the classroom, and the school even frowns on their use at home.

iPad as a form of class warfare? You decide.

Quote, unquote

Today, two on technology, both quoted in Janelle S. Taylor, The Public Life of the Fetal Sonogram (2008):

[Technology] seems "thinglike" when we point to specific objects or techniques as its most visible manifestations, but the discursive power of technology as a term is in large measure attributable to its vague, intangible, indeterminate character - the fact that it does not refer to anything as specific or tangible as a tool or a machine.

-- Leo Marx, "Technology: The Emergence of a Hazardous Concept" (1997)

Those who advocate a new technique are liable to suffer from a strange condition called certainty.

-- Ann Oakley, Essays on Women, Medicine and Health (1993)

Modern parenting

Here are two posts recently shared by friends on Facebook:

The first is on the topic of slut-shaming from a blog on sex-positive parenting. The take-home point, at the conclusion of the post, is this:

Slut-shaming is a time tested tool in our culture. We use it under the guises of keeping kids from doing some sexually inappropriate thing. But does that work? No. Does it cause a lot more harm than good? Yes. I don’t want to raise a hypocritical judgmental misogynist. Which means I have to have these conversations with him NOW, not when he’s 21 and in college.

The second is this article in The New York Times, which reports on the consequences of "sexting" in a Washington state middle school. The article notes the ways in which sexting has become normalized in American popular culture. In other words, no wonder even middle schoolers will do it:

The prevalence of under-age sexting is unclear and can often depend on the culture of a particular school or circle of students. An Internet poll conducted for The Associated Press and MTV by Knowledge Networks in September 2009 indicated that 24 percent of 14- to 17-year-olds had been involved in “some type of naked sexting,” either by cellphone or on the Internet. A December 2009 telephone poll from the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project found that 5 percent of 14- to 17-year-olds had sent naked or nearly naked photos or video by cellphone, and that 18 percent had received them. Boys and girls send photos in roughly the same proportion, the Pew survey found.

But a double standard holds. While a boy caught sending a picture of himself may be regarded as a fool or even a boastful stud, girls, regardless of their bravado, are castigated as sluts.

Photos of girls tend to go viral more often, because boys and girls will circulate girls’ photos in part to shame them, explained Danah Boyd, a senior social media researcher at Microsoft and a fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

In contrast, when a boy sends a revealing photo of himself to a girl, Dr. Boyd noted, she usually does not circulate it.

The problem, then, is not just sexting, but "slut-shaming," which is a phrase that I cringe even to use here in quotes.

Further proof that we need Feminism 4.0 oh so badly. Who wants in?

Somebody had to say it

Classes ended Friday, finals start tomorrow. So, I took advantage of the lull: I put on clothes and a shade of lipstick that make me feel a little frilly, we hired a baby sitter, and StraightMan and I went to a party! Where admittedly we talked to a bunch of our faculty friends and kvetched about how hard this semester has been, especially for the parents who have had to deal with head lice. Remember what I said about "sucks" being the new normal?

What with writing exams and managing students suddenly concerned with their performance (or lack thereof) in my classes, I have had nary a moment to keep up with the Times, but StraightMan just turned to me (literally, from his desk next to mine) and said I should stop whatever it was that I was doing (which happened to be re-reading the exam that I wrote for this Wednesday) and look at this opinion piece: "What Progressives Don’t Understand About Obama".

I am glad that somebody said it: The United States has a "black" president, but that does not mean that we do not - or that he does not - have to contend continually with issues of race in the United States. When historians look back at Obama's presidency, they will have to look seriously at how race conditioned and constrained his actions and reactions.

Obama, in fact, cannot enjoy the privilege of playing an avenging cowboy: "What the progressives forget is that black intellectuals have been called “paranoid,” “bitter,” “rowdy,” “angry,” “bullies,” and accused of tirades and diatribes for more than 100 years."

Also, Ishmael Reed reminds us: "When these progressives refer to themselves as Mr. Obama’s base, all they see is themselves. They ignore polls showing steadfast support for the president among blacks and Latinos."

Along these lines, I find this piece in The Nation's Finest News Source from a few weeks back to be strangely spot-on about the State of the Union. Proving yet again that the fake news can be so much more insightful.

Mobilize me

It usually feels good when somebody agrees with you. Also, when somebody else is able to articulate what you have been thinking, but have not been able to put into words. Even better when that somebody else has a high-profile perch from which to persuade, perhaps, still others. This is how I felt when I read Malcolm Gladwell's article, "Small Change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted," in the October 4th issue of The New Yorker.

Gladwell is critical of the hype surrounding Facebook, Twitter, and other "social media" as instruments of social change. To make his point, he contrasts the example of sit-in's in the segregated south during the 1960s with one man's recent campaign to get back his friend's Sidekick from a teenager who found it in a NYC taxi... In part, what is contrasted is the cause (or in the case of the Sidekick, "cause"), but it is also the mobilization of people behind it.

Notably, Gladwell describes how and why civil-rights organizations of the 1960s successfully organized volunteers to make great sacrifices (including their lives) in pursuit of their cause. Not being an expert on social movements, I do not feel that I can evaluate his suggestion that the success of the civil-rights movement is due, in part, to its hierarchical structure. Then again, this being Gladwell's reporting, I am guessing that the hierarchy hypothesis is drawn from scholarly works that are not cited here. (See my post from yesterday on journalism's reliance on scholarly sources...)

Technomongers today insist that social networks motivate people. "But that's not true," Gladwell writes. "Social networks are effective at increasing participation - by lessening the level of motivation that participation requires." For example, he mentions that the Save Darfur Coalition has a Facebook page with 1,282,339 members, "who have donated an average of nine cents apiece." On the one hand, more than 1 million x 9 cents each still seems a sum worth cheering. Also, it seems to demonstrate what happens when "everyone" shares the burden. However. Pocket change does not make social change. "Facebook activism succeeds not by motivating people to make a real sacrifice but by motivating them to do the things that people do when they are not motivated enough to make a real sacrifice," Gladwell writes. "We are a long way from the lunch counters of Greensboro."

In describing what Facebook's strengths are, Gladwell references the work of sociologist Mark Granovetter in suggesting that social media "lets us exploit the power of these kinds of distant connections with marvellous efficiency. It's terrific at the diffusion of innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration, seamlessly matching up buyers and sellers, and the logistical functions of the dating world. But weak ties seldom lead to high-risk activism."

The observations here about weak ties and strong ties led me to think about points that I try to make in ANTH 100 lectures on how / why we need to think about economic activity as cultural and economic activity. The French sociologist / anthropologist Marcel Mauss (1872-1950) wrote an essay called "The Gift," which has been influential in anthropological studies, not only of economics, but also of kinship, gender, and reproduction. Mauss observed that there are no "free" gifts: Receiving gifts obligates persons to other persons: One must eventually reciprocate. Giving gifts - whether yams, pigs, or women-as-brides - establishes and maintains obligations between persons. In effect, both giving and receiving gifts can "cost" persons. Yet, it might be that the higher the price of giving and receiving, the mightier the obligation, the stronger the tie.

The strength of ties with other persons depends on the demands that we make on other persons and that they make on us. I have been thinking lately about how we see this in our everyday experiences. This is not to say that we in fact expect our friends to give or do - it is that we can. Or could. That is what makes us friends...

Perhaps what civil-rights organizations did so successfully depended not only on hierarchical structure, but also, in fact, on demanding so much of persons?

RAP app

So, an anthropologist whom StraightMan and I know and call friend has been developing new ways of communicating with people about race - apps for the iPhone and iPod touch. One is a kind of quiz for teens and adults, the other is a game for kids ages 3 and up to play with their grown-ups. The apps are part of The Race Awareness Project (RAP).

I esp. think the game is a terrific concept. Teaching kids about race - and in particular, modeling for kids how to talk (and listen) about race - is an important and meaningful responsibility. It seems to me, however, that Americans are much more open talking about sex with their kids than about race - or class, for that matter.

Reading about the apps makes me wish I had an iPhone or iPod touch.

Feminist technologies

Linda Layne, an anthropologist whom I much admire, has a blog about her new book on Feminist Technologies. In her first posting, she poses an interesting question: Are fashionable birth control packs feminist or antifeminist?

I will give the prototypical cultural anthropologist's response right here: I suppose it all depends on what you mean by "feminism" :)

I know, I know: This is "just" another example of marketing. However. I like the cute case. I like the sense of play that it evokes. I think feminism can be playful. I think feminists themselves / ourselves can be fun and funny.

This question called to mind a conversation that I had this semester with a student whom I was advising on his independent study project on masculinity and the male pill. We started to think about the kind of packaging that might be developed for a birth control pill for men.

A soft slim case that looks like a condom stashed in a man's wallet? Or a hard sleek case that resembles a smartphone? It even could send a text message reminding him to take his pill at a given time.

(I bet there already is an iPhone app for women that can be used to track ovulation / menstruation?)