Zaayra, 18
Media Consumption: Several hours every day
Favorite Media/Technology: Instagram
How do you and your family interact with media/technology?
We all interact with each other through various forms of Social Media. From family groups on WhatsApp to sending memes to each other on Instagram. Social Media is an important part of all our lives.
How do you and your peers interact with media/technology?
Similar to my family, my peers and I all interact through social media. We all got inspiration through social media and try to model ourselves through it. Posting regularly and seeing what others post is also something that excites us.
What do you use media for?
I use media for basically everything in my life. It is my inspiration for most things I do. The way I dress, the food I eat, and even the people I try to be like, are all inspired by social media.
What is your favorite/least favorite thing about media/technology?
My least favorite thing about social media is the aspect of stalking. I feel that some people can misuse social media and can invade the privacy of others.
What is one thing you want the people who create the media you like to watch/play/interact with to know?
I would want the people who create the media I like to know that their content has a significant impact on my beliefs and values, and that they have the power to shape the way I see the world. Therefore, I hope they take their responsibility seriously and create content that is diverse, inclusive, and promotes positive messages.
What media do you interact with the most?
I interact with social media the most. More specifically, I use Instagram more often than other apps. I model my life through what I see on Instagram.
Where do you get most of your information about what’s happening in the world (e.g., news, internet, parents, etc.)?
I get most of the information about what’s happening in the world through Instagram. Other than that I also get news through the Internet and my parents.
What media helps you stay busy/stay calm during challenging times?
TikTok and Instagram help me stay calm and busy during challenging times. They provide me with entertainment through memes and reels and keep me distracted.
What lessons have you learned from the COVID-19 pandemic and other challenging times?
From the COVID-19 pandemic and other challenging times, I have learned the importance of adaptability and resilience. It is crucial to be able to adjust to new circumstances and persevere through difficult situations in order to thrive in an ever-changing world.
Have you learned anything about how you use media and technology because of the COVID-19 pandemic and other challenging times?
Yes, the COVID-19 pandemic has taught me to be more mindful of my media consumption and to take breaks from technology when needed for my mental health. It has also shown me the importance of using technology for social connection and staying informed, while being cautious of misinformation and excessive screen time.
Interviewed by: Aditya Singh, UCLA student
Erin, 17
Media Consumption: Average of 8 hours per day (between iPhone and laptop)
Favorite Media/Technology: iPhone
How often do you and your family interact with media/technology?
My parents use their phones most often for work and family communication. My sister and I use our laptops, often for school, and our phones for social media and communication with family and friends.
How do you and your peers interact with media/technology?
The only technology we are allowed to use at school is the laptops we are provided with. We get in trouble for using our phones. When away from school, we all have phones we use to connect via iMessage and FaceTime or social media apps like Snapchat, BeReal, and Instagram.
What do you use media for?
I use media primarily for communication and entertainment purposes.
What is your favorite/least favorite thing about technology/media?
My favorite thing about media/technology is that it allows me to stay in touch with family and friends that are out of state and country. My dad travels a lot for work, I have family that lives on the East Coast, and many of my longtime friends go to different schools than me; technology makes it easy to get in touch/stay in touch with everyone.
What is one thing you want the people who create the media you like to watch/play/interact with to know?
People who create entertainment media should recognize the importance of inclusivity. It would be nice to see more Southeast Asian American representation.
What media do you interact with the most?
I use Instagram and TikTok the most. On Instagram I post stories almost daily. My guilty pleasure media is TikTok. I'll pick up my phone for what feels like five minutes when in reality, I find myself scrolling on my for you page for hours. My sister and I always have fun sending each other videos and making our own.
Where do you get most of your information about what's happening in the world (e.g., news, internet, parents, etc.)?
My information mostly comes from my parents, friends, and sometimes teachers. Every once in a while, I will find political information on my Instagram or TikTok feeds.
What media helps you stay busy/stay calm during challenging times?
TikTok and Spotify help me stay busy and calm during challenging times. For example, I watch a lot of comedy videos on TikTok when I get overwhelmed with school because they are entertaining and provide a good distraction when needed. I also really enjoy listening to music and find it helpful at times. I have different playlists for my different moods and activities.
What lessons have you learned from the COVID-19 pandemic and other challenging times?
I have learned not to take being in the classroom for granted. Doing school on Zoom and being unable to see my friends during the pandemic was difficult.
Have you learned anything about how you use media and technology because of the COVID-19 pandemic and other challenging times?
I have learned to use social media in a more casual manner because of the pandemic. I used technology a lot during my downtime, and as I began having more fun with it, I became more comfortable with posting more authentically.
Interviewed by: Renee Rubanowitz, UCLA student
What Can Children Learn About Social Justice from Picture Books About Migration?
Many young children encounter refugees and migrants for the first time in the picture books read to them by their parents. But what can they learn from these stories? Amidst growing hostility towards immigrants in both the UK and the US in the Brexit and Trump era, we set to address this question and shed light on the role that these books play as socialization agents in young children’s lives. We selected 40 popular books published in these two countries during 2015-2019 and systematically analyzed their content, following a codebook developed specifically for this study.
We found that the stories are characterized by three dominant narratives. The first centers on the immigrant’s resolve to overcome a range of hardships and difficulties involved in the journey to their new home and the adjustments such a move requires. The second narrative focuses specifically on the migrants’ or refugees’ quest for social acceptance in their new cultural context while concurrently harboring memories of their home country. This tension is expressed through specific cultural markers, such as a Persian carpet in a story of an immigrant from Iraq to Europe, embedding words in Creole in a story of a migrant from Haiti, or employing images of Barbie and Nintendo to signify the US as the host country. The third narrative depicts a happy ending of the journey, better life in the host country, often characterized by a celebration of the protagonist’s realization of the American Dream.
“Half of the books we examined focused on contexts of forced migration, where children flee violence, war, oppression, poverty, and/or famine.”
The construction of the host country as a haven is often achieved by depicting the migrant’s life in the country of origin as extremely difficult, miserable, and dangerous. Half of the books we examined focused on contexts of forced migration, where children flee violence, war, oppression, poverty, and/or famine. In this sense – and similar to other media portrayals of migrations (such as news coverage) – these books introduce children to the dire reality of many of their counterparts around the world, by reinforcing the negative experiences of migration. In turn, they downplay voluntary migration, for example, stories of migration motivated by the desire to pursue education or a profession. The implied message in many of these children’s stories is that people migrate to “our country” (the US and the UK) which is safe, welcoming, and prosperous, in order to leave behind places that are unsafe, dangerous, dirty, and poor.
To bypass highly politicized contemporary discourses about immigration and their often divisive tendencies, one strategy that 40% of the books employ is to locate their stories in the past, using history as a prism through which to understand contemporary migration. In this way, migration is presented as a story that is safely secured in the bygone era, as in, for example, stories of immigrants who entered the US through Ellis Island or of famous figures such as Irving Berlin, who immigrated from Tsarist Russia to hospitable New York.
Interestingly, the depiction of antagonists was largely absent in the stories; the world is presented as a safe place full of well-intentioned people, similar to TV content for young audiences. The protagonists, half of whom are children, are mostly migrants themselves and are represented by and large as human characters. They are frequently characterized as active and positive, exhibiting creativity, talent, innovativeness, bravery, resilience, kindness, and optimism. Their gender identity follows the typical imbalance in children’s media more generally – namely, the majority of characters are male, and are mostly depicted as active. It was striking that even the stories that did focus on a female protagonist completely ignored the particular gendered hardships and injustice faced by millions of girls in their countries from which they flee.
Finally, we also noted that the trend of diversifying the representation of children in contemporary media and culture manifests itself in picture books as well: over a third of the characters have brown skin, which can signify a range of races and ethnicities, including African, Latinx, Middle-Eastern, and/or South Asian, a quarter have white skin, and the rest are non-human or had more than one skin colour. In addition, some of the child characters are depicted in dual-parent families while others are presented in single-parent families. At the same time, heterosexuality remains the norm: there is no reference to non-heterosexual families or characters.
So what lessons can children learn from picture books focusing on immigration?
They may learn that migration stories are success stories, where children move from unfortunate circumstances in their home countries, which are predominantly in the global South, to much better lives in the host countries in the global North – most frequently the US. They are generally greeted with generosity and hospitality and find their host country to be a safe place of comfort, acceptance, and happiness, which is devoid of antagonists, and in which opportunities are bountiful and individual efforts are rewarded.
“[These picture books] miss an opportunity to broaden children’s knowledge and appreciation of the plurality of cultures, experiences, and places and the urgent need to respect and protect them.”
This is a familiar construction that celebrates ‘bootstrap neoliberalism,’ whereby individual determination, perseverance, resilience and optimism bear fruit in the ‘land of opportunities.’ Yet it misses the chance to engage young children with issues of equity, discrimination, and injustice in their own ‘host societies.’ It also contributes to the binary and stereotypical depiction of the global North as a safe haven, and the global South as a monolithic space of misery and suffering. The richness and diversity of cultures, traditions, histories and experiences outside of the western world is, in this way, largely erased. Therefore, we concluded that “paradoxically, while children’s picture books concerning migration are aimed at highlighting, appreciating, and celebrating difference and are part of the growing trend of children’s ‘diversity’ books that promote justice and fairness, they seem concurrently to erase difference and injustice. They thus miss an opportunity to broaden children’s knowledge and appreciation of the plurality of cultures, experiences, and places and the urgent need to respect and protect them.”
Shani Orgad
Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science
Dafna Lemish
School of Communication and Information, Rutgers University
Collaborator of the Center for Scholars & Storytellers