BEHIND THE SCREEN
and her friends are together.
“We’ll be sitting on a couch
next to each other, texting each
other,” she notes. “We text in the
same room. It’s weird, I don’t
know why.”
As we chat in her lime-and-lavender painted room, surrounded by
soccer trophies and a framed collage of Justin Bieber photos, Casey
alternates between checking her
phone, which buzzes incessantly
wi th a steady stream of texts, replying to messages, and refreshing her Instagram and Facebook
feeds, where she “likes” people’s
posts. Occasionally, she plays a few
rounds on Dots, her new favorite
iPhone game, or scrolls through
fashion accessories on Wanelo, a
social shopping site heavy on photos. Later, Casey uses Facebook
to get homework help and posts a
question in a private group chat set
up by her classmates.
Casey’s social networking faces
scrutiny from her mother, who has
her own Instagram and Facebook
accounts from which to monitor
what Casey and her friends are
doing online. Occasionally, Casey’s
mother will insist that a picture
her daughter has shared needs
to come down — usually because
Casey has been “exclusive,” post-
HUFFINGTON
07.14.13
“She wasn’t in the group chat, so we
stopped being friends with her.
Not because we didn’t like her, but
we just weren’t in contact with her.”
ing a photo of that could offend
friends who weren’t included in
that day’s activity. Via Apple’s Find
My iPhone app, the Schwartz family can also keep constant tabs on
each other’s location.
Thanks to Silicon Valley, there’s
no off-switch for one’s social life,
and popularity has become instantly quantifiable.
Here are just a few of the things
Casey regularly tracks:
• The number of contacts stored
on her iPhone: 187
• The number of people following
her on Instagram: around 580
• The number of people who’ve
asked to follow her on Instagram, but she’s refused to
accept: more than 100
• The number of people following
her Tumblr blog: more than 100
• Her high score on Dots:
almost 400
• The number of photos she