Session Proposal: Teens on the Net

Posted on March 16, 2013 by Melissa Campbell

Aisha Oglivie & I are interested in teens on the internet: how do they build identity? How, if at all, do they become activists? What are the downfalls of tech for teens, and what are the positives? How do we use tech to instill a sense of agency, urgency and justice in teens, and how are they doing that themselves already?

SESSION NOTES

Categories: Session Proposals |

About Melissa Campbell

I graduated from The New School in May 2011 with a BA in Cultural & Media Studies, where I wrote my undergraduate thesis about fashion-focused fat-positive spaces online as--I think the phrase was--"panoptic forms of resistance." A lot of my academic work in college was focused around bodies and embodiment, and I'm still interested in that, especially in terms of how many political/feminist spaces both center & negate bodies and bodily experience. I've been working as a blogger, editor and social media manager for feminist non-profits since 2010, and right now I work at SPARK Movement as the coordinator of the SPARKteam, a group of girl activists between the ages of 13 and 22. I'm particularly interested in social networking & teen identity building, especially ideas of curating & performing identities on Tumblr and Facebook. I'm also interested in how tech is transforming sex and sexuality for teens and how the internet both breaks down and reinforces age barriers and the entire concept of "the teen." (I am also very interested in boy bands and tween girl sexuality but that may be a little off-base for THATCamp--but then, maybe not!)