“I just wish I could borrow the eyes of a teenager for a day because their relationship with social media is so different than anything I have experienced. I don’t even understand how they use it in a 24-hour day.” -TV Writer, 2023
Borrow My Eyes is a project that invites adolescents to offer a first-person account of their daily social media use patterns and, especially, how they use social media to maintain their friendships on and offline. This project, funded by the Funders for Adolescent Science Translation (FAST), emerged from a roundtable discussion that took place at the Center for Scholars & Storytellers @UCLA Creative Collaboration Think Tank (CCTT) in the Spring of 2023.
Watch the Teaser for Borrow My Eyes: An Oral History Interviews About Teen Friendship and Social Media
This research aims to amplify the voices of teens and create a teen-centered archive that can be accessed and utilized by both academic researchers and storytellers. This collection of oral histories will allow users to see social media through their eyes, and listen to how it shapes their lives. Each video is organized into chapters and includes a series of major themes in the description to make them more accessible and easy for users to navigate.
Borrow My Eyes is a collection of video oral histories with pairs of adolescent best friends. Through the series, you’ll meet a diverse group of teens ranging from 14 to 18 who all use their digital devices differently. They talk about their friendship, the content they like to follow, parental controls, the importance of followers in high school, tropes they are sick of seeing on TV, and the shifting definitions of what it means to be “cool” or “popular.” While there is much research on the harmful effects of social media, this project aims to uncover other emotions teens experience online: joy, excitement, frustration, and feelings of isolation or connection online.
We hope Borrow My Eyes will be a tool for content creators and academics alike:
Storytellers can use oral histories to produce more authentic and accurate representations of teens and social media use in their content.
Storytellers can hear the voices of real teens that fit the demographic or other characteristics of a character they are writing.
Academics can use this archive as a way of recognizing patterns in how teens use media and to drive further research.
Oral histories will be available publicly and can be used as course material or as a learning tool.
Meet Montserrat (17) and Gladys (17)
They primarily use Instagram direct messages to keep in touch. They also spend a significant amount of time watching and making TikToks. Their interests span a wide range from anime and boba to the Harry Potter club, traveling, and occasionally skipping band practice. They both use social media as a tool to find communities with shared interests and to stay connected with family living abroad. They find it cringe when film and TV use internet language (like “LOL”) out loud. Watch the full interview to learn more!
Meet Levon (18) and Noah (17)
Their friendship is based on humor, deep conversations, and supporting each other as they reach toward big dreams (like starting college or building up a brand). They primarily text or use Instagram and a typical interaction that starts with sharing a silly picture or video often snowballs into a conversation about life, mental health, or their latest creative projects. They like to use social media as a place to share and witness happiness, uplift their friends, and support their creative endeavors. Watch the full interview to learn more!
Meet Aspasia (17) and Grace (17)
They are “inseparable” best friends that like sports and using Pinterest to find outfit inspiration and planning trips they want to take after college. Their daily platforms are Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, and Messages. They use a lot of pictures when they communicate, sending random pictures, bitmojis, and filtered pics through messages and Snapchat. They want to see more authentic and positive friendships in film and TV. Watch the full interview to learn more!
Meet Lea (14) and Caroline (14)
They use Discord, Instagram, messages, WhatsApp and play some video games like Roblox. They love to use “study servers” where they can discuss homework and quadratic equations. They also like to see their feeds full dogs, horses, and skincare products. Watch the full interview to learn more!
Meet Savin (15) and Deven (15)
They like video games, sports, and sneakers. They primarily communicate through the audio call feature on Discord while they play video games – the calls last for hours at a time. They play a mix of different games and feel that playing all sorts of games while talking is a big foundation of their friendship. They also use Snapchat (for close friends), Instagram (for broader acquaintances), and TikTok. For them, the internet is best when it is a fun and unserious escape from real life. Watch the full interview to learn more!
Meet Matthew (16) and Tommy (16)
They enjoy theater, video games, and playing Dungeons and Dragons. They avoid social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok or Facebook. Instead, they primarily use Discord to talk to their friends via group messaging or long audio calls. They are both conscious about how to limit their time on social media. For example, they also watch YouTube but try to stick to only watching long-form videos because they feel YouTube “shorts” negatively effect their attention. Watch the full interview to learn more!
Project Findings
Discord was the most popular social media platform for communicating.
YouTube was the most popular platform for watching content.
All of the teens use different social media platforms, and use them differently - this varies between peer groups and demographics (ranging from Discord, Instagram, video games, TikTok, Pinterest, YouTube, Snapchat, Google Hangouts, etc).
Many of their parents use controls to limit screen time or track their location. This was generally accepted and thought of as something reasonable to keep everyone safe.
Most of the teens hardly ever text their friends and often don’t even have their phone numbers. They mostly communicate through social media platforms (like Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, and Google Hangouts).
On Social Media Platforms:
Social Media in Film and TV:
When watching film and TV, most teens don’t relate to characters seeking popularity. Many are resistant to the idea that there is one definition of being “cool”. Social media allows teens to explore different interests and find their communities.
Many teens find it “cringy” and unrelatable when tv shows try to use internet slang because the terms are generally not something they say out loud.
Most of the teens feel like they do not see themselves reflected in the film and TV they watch.
Social Media and Schools:
Most of the teens consciously struggle to limit time scrolling and focus on school work or other things.
Some teens frequently use social media throughout the day at school, while others turn it off and focus on school work. This also is influenced by the schools' policies.
Teens often use social media for school or study purposes.
Many teens expressed “joy” or “excitement” when a new product from their favorite companies (make-up, skincare, sneakers, concert tickets, etc.) is launched online.
Many of the teens find it easier to have difficult conversations through text so that they have time to think and process their responses.
Social Media and Emotions:
Most of the teens felt like the films and TV they watch portray narrow, one-dimensional identities (“dorky theater kid”, “dumb popular jock” etc) and that is not reflective of the multifaceted and complex personalities they see among their peers and in themselves. Teens also stated that friend groups are not as rigid and segregated as they are typically depicted on TV.
Most of the teens agreed that a large social media following does not necessarily equate to popularity “IRL” in their schools.
If you have questions about this project or would like to learn more, please contact Devon Baur at Dbaur@g.ucla.edu or Atlas Burrus, CSS Research Coordinator at atlas@scholarsandstorytellers.com
Acknowledgements
Author: Devon Baur, PhD Candidate, UCLA Theater and Performance Studies
Funded By: Funders for Adolescence Science Translation (FAST)
Advisory Council
Marieke Gaboury City of Palo Alto
Patrick Hynes TikTok
Anna Paternot Ignite Media
Samira Pingali Hope Lab
Maddy Roth OBB Media
Jill Sanford, CSS Senior Media Advisor
Stephen Schueller, Ph.D University of California, Irvine
Johanna Stein Dreamworks
Carley Whitt Writer for Never Have I Ever
Teen Council Members
Sophene Avedissian
Banks Vadeboncoeur
Video Credits
Trailer - Second Peninsula
Video Editor - Victor Polyakov
Videographer (Northern California) - Kyle Luo
Videographer (Southern California) - Second Peninsula
Teens Interviewed
Aspasia
Caroline
Deven
Gladys
Grace
Léa
Levon
Matthew
Montserrat
Noah
Savin
Thomas
Thank you to the CSS Team
Special Thanks to
The Palo Alto Children’s Theatre
Tanmay Mathur
Nathaniel Qian