Powerful Devices: How teens’ smartphones disrupt power in the theatre, classroom and beyond

Running head: POWERFUL DEVICES

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Powerful devices:

How teens’ smartphones disrupt power in the theatre, classroom and beyond

John M. Richardson

University of Calgary

"This is an Author's Original Manuscript of an article whose final and

definitive form, the Version of Record, has been published in Learning,

Media and Technology, December 19, 2013,

copyright Taylor & Francis, available online at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/17439884.2013.867867

Author Note

John M. Richardson, Faculty of Education, University of Calgary.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to John M.

Richardson, 199 Powell Avenue, Ottawa, Ontario, K1S 2A4, Canada. Contact:

[email protected], or 613.236.3340.


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Abstract

During a series of high school English and Drama class trips to the theatre, so many

students were online, the entire back row often glowed blue. Although much of the

literature suggests that information and communication technologies (ICTs) are benign

and neutral, this back row collision of digital and live culture signals to teachers that

technology is freighted with issues of power: questions of identity formation,

consumerism, autonomy and freedom. This qualitative study of high school students at

the conclusion of their four-play series suggests that cellphones shape the youth audience

experience, that etiquette regarding the use of these powerful devices remains sharply

contested, and that students apply a range of strategies to dealing with issues of power

and agency around their use.

Keywords: youth theatre audiences; cellphones; power; technology


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Powerful devices:

How teens’ smartphones disrupt power in the theatre, classroom and beyond

I teach English and drama at an independent school in Ottawa, Canada, and every

year my colleagues and I attend a series of four plays at the city’s National Arts Centre

(NAC) and Great Canadian Theatre Company (GCTC) with grade 11 Drama and grade

12 English students. A few years ago my students alerted me to the fact that so many

young people were online during our trips to the theatre, entire rows glowed blue

(Richardson, 2012, 2013). I was immediately fascinated by this mysterious and

subversive collision of digital and non-digital culture and struck by the power of the

students’ portable devices and the connections they enable. Although much of the

discourse surrounding technology in schools suggests that technology is benign and

neutral (Bonk, 2009; Prensky, 2006; Tapscott, 2008), critical scholars contend that

technology actually changes, undermines and creates power within the learning

environment (Philip & Garcia, 2013), making it crucial that “any academic account of

technology use in education needs to be framed in explicit terms of societal conflict over

the distribution of power” (Selwyn, 2012, 217). This appeared to be the case within my

particular learning environment, the theatre, and I ran a research study during our

2012/13 series to find out more. How do the smartphones tucked away in students’

pockets and backpacks affect the circulation of power within a theatre, and what do

teachers need to know about the effect of these powerful devices in order to better

prepare students for the pleasures of a 2,000 year-old tradition?


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1. Locations of struggle

There is no question that technology provides students and educators with a host

of valuable new opportunities. In theatre education, for example, sites such as Second

Life allow students to learn about theatre design in virtual environments (Kuksa &

Childs, 2010). But beyond the impressive possibilities lie deeper truths that should be

considered along with the benefits and virtues of new approaches, apps and devices:

technology is a crucial facet of the cultural struggle, formation and resistance that

characterizes education. This argument is made in forceful terms by Kincheloe (2011),

who notes that “childhood is a cultural construction shaped in the contemporary era by

the forces of this media-catalyzed techno-power” (160). This echoes the spirit of Freire,

who argued that “all data are shaped by the context and by the individuals that produced

them” (Kincheloe, McLaren, & Steinberg, 2012, 16).

Also critiquing neo-liberalism, Steinberg (2011) coins the term “kinderculture” to

encapsulate how “corporate children’s culture has replaced schooling as the producer of

the central curriculum” (13) and how “electronic kinderculture has quickly become a new

culture of childhood learning” (16). She challenges the “positivist” view of children,

which views “children as lesser than adults” and ignores “the way power operates to

oppress children around the axes of race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, etc” (Steinberg,

2011, 5). The positivist epistemological position sees children as “passive entities who

must be made to submit to adult decisions about their lives” (Steinberg, 2011, 7). Instead,

she views the situation as more complex. Children can be exploited, but they also possess

agency, even as they can struggle to swim within the flood of information—much of it

designed for adults. Given that “power produces images of the world and the people who


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inhabit it that help make meaning for those who receive the images” (Steinberg, 2011,

47), it is important to understand how media experiences “filter and construct our view of

the world and ourselves and whose interests they serve” (Steinberg, 2011, 35).

Also approaching the question of young people and technology from the point of

view of critical pedagogy is Giroux (1994), who reminds us that “teachers always work

and speak within historically and socially determined relations of power” (1). To act as

though technology is nothing but a facilitator of information exchange is to acquiesce to

its hidden agenda. Not that the landscape is unchanging: as cyberspace works to

“condense time and space into what Paul Virilio calls ‘speed space,’ new desires, modes

of association, and forms of resistance inscribe themselves into diverse spheres of popular

culture” (Giroux, 1994, 10). Educators need to understand what is going on in students’

lives—including the theatre—so as to be able to “critically analyze the new electronic

technologies that are shaping everyday life” (Giroux, 2006, 4) during this “second media

age … that fuses technology, power, and human relations in new ways (Giroux, 2006, 6).

2. Technology and consumerism

One of the “fusions” evoked by the teen with the cell at the play is consumerism.

This, declares Giroux (2006), “now seems to be the only obligation of citizenship and

civic responsibility” (15). Whether at home, in the theatre, or in the classroom, “youth

now inhabit a cultural landscape in which, increasingly, they can only recognize

themselves in terms preferred by the market” (Giroux & Pollock, 2011, 2). They have

been raised to operate within a “culture of commodification” (Giroux & Pollock, 2011,

1). They may “believe themselves immune to the incessant call to ‘buy, buy, buy’ and to

think only about ‘me, me, me’, but what is actually happening is a selective elimination


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and reordering of the possible modes of political, social and ethical vocabularies made

available to youth” (Giroux & Pollock, 2011, 5).

A key work in the study of how young people operate within this highly

commercialized environment is Kenway and Bullen’s Consuming Children (2001). The

authors disagree with “developmentalism”—the view that childhood “involves a linear

progression from the simple to the complex and from the irrational to the rational”

(Kenway & Bullen, 2001, 3). Instead, they see contemporary times as characterized by a

collapse in traditional “demarcations between education, entertainment and advertising”

(Kenway & Bullen, 2001, 3) and a blurring of the lines between the generations. They

also recognize that in Fordist economies, market activity generally involved consumer

staples such as food and clothing, whereas in post-Fordist times they involve cultural

technologies and services. Teens with technology fall squarely within this contemporary

paradigm, purchasing devices and services, and downloading apps, music and movies.

The time when schools “tried to maintain a commercial-free zone or sacred space for

young people” (Kenway & Bullen, 2001, 102) has passed. The diffusion of technology

through the schools by major corporations has blurred the line between education,

corporate profit and teen consumer culture. Kids texting in the theatre—or checking

Facebook in the academic setting (Selwyn, 2009)—are the perfect embodiment of “the

current hybridization of entertainment, advertising and education” (Kenway & Bullen,

2001, 23). Technology in and out of the classroom contributes to student’s exposure to

advertising, which Christopher Lasch in his book The Culture of Narcissism (1991)

contends:


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… manufactures a product of its own: the consumer, perpetually

unsatisfied, restless, anxious, and bored. Advertising serves not so much to

advertise products as to promote consumption as a way of life. It ‘educates’ the

masses into an unappeasable appetite not only for goods but also for new

experiences and personal fulfillment. It upholds consumption as the answer to the

age-old discontents of loneliness, sickness, weariness, lack of sexual satisfaction

… it creates new forms of unhappiness—personal insecurity, status anxiety (72).

The student in the theatre continues to be exposed to commercialism through their use of

the smartphone, any attempt by teachers to shape identity through exposure to theatre

undermined through the students’ exposure to commercial web-sites. One form of

identity formation is pitted against another, since “brands are inextricably tied to young

people’s identity-building” (Kenway & Bullen, 2001, 170). All of this makes it crucial

that educators teach students “to understand the differences between data, information,

knowledge, education, entertainment and advertising. But can the marketized school tell

the difference?” (Kenway & Bullen, 2001, 188).

Other scholars are also concerned with the ways in which the consumption ethos

is implicit in the use of computers in the theatre and classroom. Denzin (2010) argues that

“the information technologies of late capitalism function to create audiences who use the

income from their own labor to buy the products that their labor produces” (285). The

student in the theatre audience is at once a media audience and a technology audience,

watching a play while at some level exposed to online advertising. Sandlin and McLaren

(2010) argue that education is itself a form of consumption, with in-school ads,

consumerism-oriented courses, and of course brand name technological devices. Its most


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important contribution “is creating a peer group of teens who relate through brand names

and consumerism-oriented activities” (McLaren, 2010, xix). The scholars urge teachers to

take consumerism seriously by adopting “a critical pedagogy of consumption” that would

ask “‘What kind of consumers are being created?’ and ‘In whose interests do those

constructions work?’” (Sandlin & McLaren, 2010b). Usher (2010) refers to Baudrillard

and his “code of consumativity,” which “marks a ceaseless movement such that the

consumption image is never satisfied—there is always a lack, an endless desire to possess

the real but where there is no real, only its image or simulacra” (as cited in Usher, 2010,

39). One only has to think of the advertising that surrounds much technology—the cool

individuals, the marriage of tech to pop, the modernist designs and the bright colours—to

see the appeal of modern devices. By using the devices in the TELE, students are tacitly

encouraged to buy their own. After all, if schools have invested in the technology, isn’t

the technology by default good?

3. Technology and surveillance

The texting theatre teen is also emblematic of another form of circulating,

consumerist power. By using his or her device instead of watching a play, the watcher is

watched—in this case by the corporations that control vast swathes of the Internet. Fuchs

(2012) notes that for Marx “surveillance was a fundamental aspect of the capitalist

economy” (370) and today, “corporations conduct a systematic gathering of data about

applicants, employees, the labour process, private property, consumers and competitors”

(Fuchs, 2012, 43) in order to maximize profits. Nowhere is that more prevalent than in

the world of Web 2.0. Here, the work of Andrejevic (2009; 2012a) is key to

understanding the ways in which information secretly circulates. Every action that a


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prosumer makes on the Internet is “a reflexively redoubled one. Acts of production and

consumption both become, in this regard, productive, insofar as they generate

information commodities” (Andrejevic, 2012a, 84). In other words, every keystroke—

every Facebook post, Google search and text—is compiled in databases and becomes

another means for the corporation to make money by selling information and shaping

behaviour. This raises the prospect that “consumers will be put to work marketing to

themselves, and, through this extra work, generate a customized product for which they

are required to pay a premium” (Andrejevic, 2012a, 73). Individual control over how one

is positioned within the data mines is difficult to achieve: “the complexity of the

algorithms makes it impossible to discern why one has been turned down for a loan, or is

targeted by a particular political party” (Andrejevic, 2012a, 86). Besides, the “liquidity of

today’s surveillance” (Trottier & Lyon, 2012, 92)—seen in the constantly changing

privacy rules on Facebook, for example, the rise and fall of tech tools, or the expansion of

Google into new business areas—keep prosumers in the dark.

Going even further in his latest work, Andrejevic (2012b) writes that

consumerism has so saturated the environment that marketers are now using neuroscience

to aim their messages directly at the brain’s subconscious receptors. From this point of

view, consumers such as the kids in the back row of the theatre are now no longer seen as

people, but “bundles of nerve centres that respond to different kinds of stimuli and form

triggerable pathways as a result” (Andrejevic, 2012b, 206). The goal is to reach the

unconscious consumer, the truest self, “the part us of that yields up the truth of our

desires more accurately and objectively than consciously articulated thoughts or

psychological interpretations” (Andrejevic, 2012b, 206), and ultimately to locate the


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brain’s “buy button”—the area that, when stimulated, leads to the increased likelihood of

a consumer reaching into his or her wallet.

4. The study

For this year’s theatre series, my students and I first attended a filmed version of

the National Theatre’s The Last of the Haussmans, an emotionally-charged family drama

broadcast live from London. This was followed by The Number 14, GCTC’s commedia-

del-arte-inspired play set on a bus. The NAC’s Metamorphoses, a retelling of Greek myth

set in a swimming pool, followed. Our season concluded with The Edward Curtis

Project, GCTC’s multi-media enhanced play about the famous photographer of First

Nations peoples. The number of students who attended each performance ranged from

100 to 140 students. At the end of the series and with the help of research assistants, I ran

a series of eight focus groups and interviews with students that lasted between 45 minutes

and two hours. I also sent all of the students an anonymous Google Docs survey on their

responses to the plays and their thoughts about live theatre and technology. A second

survey two weeks later picked up on some of the students’ ideas in order to probe more

deeply. Seventy-five students answered the first survey and 61 answered the second, with

the written responses together yielding over 50,000 words of commentary. For the

purpose of this article, I will analyse the interview responses of Oscar, Bridget and Sean

(all pseudonyms). Oscar was an 18 year-old student about to take a gap year before

starting university. He had limited exposure to theatre prior to the series. Bridget and

Sean, who were interviewed together, were also 18 year-old, pre-university students, but

the friends both came from theatre-going families and could draw on an impressive range


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of theatre experiences. The students’ responses will be supported by written responses

from both of the surveys.

The survey data and interview transcripts were analysed according to the

qualitative research methods described by Miles, Huberman and Saldaña (2014) and

Saldaña (2013), a method that sees qualitative research as a process of data condensation,

data display, and conclusion drawing/verification (Miles et al., 2014, 12). The combined

research method of open-ended survey, focus groups and interviews was employed in

order to provide a number of affordances. The online survey reached a large number of

students, and by allowing students to write their responses anonymously, a broad range of

frank, in-depth commentary emerged (Creswell, 2008, 228). The quality of the writing

was generally high, suggesting that students valued the opportunity to reflect as they

wrote. The use of focus groups and in-depth interviews has a long and established history

in qualitative research, and in media and audience studies in particular (Creswell, 2007;

Kamberelis and Dimitriadis, 2005; Morley, 2003; Radway, 1991), allowing students to

share, articulate and build upon their ideas and experiences.

5. Results

Concerning issues of power and technology in the theatre, three of the most

compelling findings to emerge from the study are:

• Smartphones and other ICTs are a powerful force in shaping students’

experience of live theatre.

• Rules and etiquette around the use of cellphones in the theatre are sharply

contested amongst students.


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• Students tend to be aware of some of the issues of power and control

surrounding their mobile devices, but most feel that they possess the skills to

mitigate any negative consequences.

5.1 How technology shapes students’ experiences of live theatre

In person and on-line responses were unanimous in their belief that ICTs have an

effect on student experiences of live theatre – even if the student’s cellphone remains

switched off during the actual play. For Oscar, digital technology has given young people

the expectation that they will have control over whatever they watch or do during their

leisure time:

Spending a night on your laptop, you are in control of everything you’re doing …

you can pause and switch activities at any time, or you can stop whenever you like.

This control does not exist in the theatre, as once you go to a play you are there for

the duration.

Oscar likes the theatre and welcomes the opportunity to try something new, so “the

duration” for him isn’t a problem. But for other students it can be more of a challenge.

The freedom that they associate with technology makes live theatre an anomaly within

their fast-paced, digitally-focused lifestyles. Bridget compared being in the theatre to

being locked into a car on a rollercoaster:

You can pause something online, you can eat dinner, it can be an 8-hour process to

watch one movie. Whereas in a play you’re stationary, you are sitting there and you

are watching and listening and they are captivating your attention, or they’re not so

your mind is wandering. When you’re in a play you’re kind of locked in it, like

you’re on a rollercoaster.


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The contrast students feel between the fluidity of their digital lives and the static nature of

spending a few hours sitting in the theatre is often seen to affect negatively their powers

of concentration. Bridget saw theatre as serving a useful purpose in the hyper-speed

world of instant connectivity, a way to “forget about the outside world”, although she felt

that “it’s harder to focus on one thing now because you could be doing so many things at

the same time”. Online respondents overwhelming agreed that the contrast between

online activities and live theatre is highly problematic:

With our busy, fast-paced, electronically driven lives it becomes excessively

difficult to sit through a live performance. Constantly being “plugged in”, the

disconnect can be dull and slow. This is something our minds aren’t used to, putting

us in a state of mind that is not calm enough to give live theatre our full attention.

Others are even more direct. “I think my daily and digital lifestyle has shortened my

attention space quite a bit, and made attending live theatre seem much longer and less

interesting than it really is”, wrote one. “I am used to begin able to pause what I am

watching, get a snack, go on Facebook, and then return when I feel like it.” “I was

waiting for the play to end so I could use my phone or get home and use my laptop”,

wrote another. But other students are unable or unwilling to wait, which has made the

theatre a site of debate around cellphone etiquette. “When you know the play's not going

to get better, that’s when you give up and you check your phone”, responded one student.

“I fought for ages, and I couldn’t do it.”

5.2 Cellphone etiquette in the theatre

Amongst the online student respondents, two evenly sized camps emerged: those

who believed that the temptation to check a smartphone during a play is too great to be


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resisted, and those who believed that to do so is the height of bad manners. Oscar took a

strong position on the anti-cellphone side, reflecting very clearly the schism within his

generation of digital natives:

Whenever I am at a theater performance … and I see another audience member pull

out a phone, it is very annoying for me. I think it's completely disrespectful … You

are there to witness the live theatre performance. You are not there to find out what

is happening online. If you want to do that, stay home. Don't come to the theatre

and distract other audience members with your annoying little glow from your

screen.

On-line respondents can be equally impassioned over the breach in etiquette a

smartphone in the theatre represents, concerned that the blue glow will draw attention

away from the stage, distract viewers, and show disrespect toward the actors:

I did not activate my phone during any of the performances. I believe that would

be disrespectful and unbelievably irritating for the performers and the people

surrounding you.

I do not use my cellphone in plays because I do not think it is fair for the actors or

the other people watching because it is distracting and disrespectful.

No that would be disrespectful and if you can’t focus for two hours on one thing

you should go get hit by a bus right now.


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Bridget is also adamant in her rejection of in-theatre cellphone use, even though she

multi-tasks online when watching TV or accomplishing other tasks:

Bridget: Nine times out of ten I’m playing “Bejeweled Blitz” or I’m playing

“Ruzzle”, which is kind of like “Boggle”, I’m playing that on my phone all the time

when I’m watching Criminal Minds. I don’t see half the things because I’m not

paying attention which is a habit I can’t seem to break.

Speaker 1: But the theater’s different?

Tori: Yes, I’m not going to pull out my phone in a theater and ruin the

experience for someone else. That’s just rude.

Speaker 1: Looking around do you see other people checking …?

Tori: Yes. I mean you’re kind of committed to being there with everyone else.

You’re not in your room. It’s such a pet peeve of mine. It’s so rude. That one bright

screen in the whole theater; everyone sees it. I hate it. It’s so annoying.

Her interview partner, Sean, agreed, with the caveat that “If it’s a good play, you don’t

want to check it. You don’t really care. But if it’s a bad play …” The play has to be good,

the friends agree, or else the attitude quickly becomes, “it’s there, so why don’t I check

it?” Continuing, Bridget added:

If it’s a really great musical, I don’t want to miss a second whereas the second it

gets slow you know people are thinking, ‘Hey, I wonder if my friend texted me or I

wonder if I got an email from my boss’ … I think that is the criteria these days.

The “criteria” – whether a play is good enough to keep people off their devices – is an

important new element to the theatre experience. The performers on stage are working


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against the audience members’ temptation to check their devices at all times, their power

diminished. When the play is going well, the theatre remains in the dark. If it isn’t so

successful, the darkness can be shot through with glowing blue screens.

Students who chose to use their devices during the play ranged from furtive time

checkers, to message-viewers, to Facebook-updaters, to music-listeners, and to full-on

Internet-surfers. “I was texting and on Facebook at some point during all of the plays,”

wrote one. “As the plays weren't of my choosing, the themes didn't always engage me

and pull me in … those two activities have become a kind of reflex when I’m a little bit

bored.” Other students were more pithy in their responses. Did they check their

smartphones during the show?

Not for long, but probably a dozen times depending on if the play was boring or

not.

For a good part of all the plays.

Yes i did. i was texting the entire time

YES! frequently during the plays and replying to all of my messages.

Three times every hour.

For the users, the customs of theatre-going appear to be a quaint anachronism. If the play

seems uninteresting, the need for distraction and stimulation reigns paramount, and the

cellphone imperative seems natural. “I did check my phone”, one student admitted

casually, “if only to play Sudoku.”

5.3 Awareness of issues of power and control

The draw of technology, even during a live play, is only one of the manifestations

of the power of tech, although it is one that students are aware of and engaged with. Some


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students focused entirely on the practical benefits of social media sites, unaware or

nonplussed by any of the possible negative consequences concerning power. One student,

for example, wrote simply “I use social media because it is an easy way to keep in touch

with people and not pay any extra fees you would on a phone bill.” Here, cost benefits are

touted, and the view of social media lies uncomplicated by larger and more troubling

issues. Others are similarly unperturbed by any downside to their digital lives:

I do not like controlling or being controlled so I do not let that happen.

The sites are just a part of my life that help me connect to other people.

I feel that I have full control over what I do online on social media.

In many other cases, however, a range of concerns emerged. Oscar reflected on his final

year of high school with candor. Recalling his struggles with low motivation, he said:

I waste a lot of time on the computer. I do things such as play games, listen to

music, check what other people are doing on Facebook. Pretty much anything

imaginable to waste time, so much so that some nights I'm not even sure what else I

could do on my computer. All I know is that I am not going to get off.

Here, I was struck by Oscar’s tone of regret, even helplessness. Other students echoed the

concern that technology can become like an addiction. Social media, one student wrote:

has the power to make you become addicted to these activities, you tend to check

your social media sites a few times a day then many more times until it becomes an

addiction.

This constant need to check status updates permeates the live theatre experience and

students suggest it is one of the reasons for the blue glow from the back row.


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Other student expressed concerns regarding the lack of control around personal

information and offered a range of responses to dealing with the hazards. One, for

example, showed a broad understanding of risk, not to do with loss of privacy, but of

social exclusion:

I know that I have control over what I show the world about myself and I can use

that control to my advantage. However … now that social media has become so

embedded into almost everyone's daily routine I feel as though if I did for some

reason want to disengage from that virtual world I would be judged and get left

behind.

In this teen’s view, social media use has become such an essential part of social life, kids

have no choice but to participate. The “advantage” mentioned by the student, however,

shows that the student feels as though he/she has confidence in their ability to play the

social media game successfully. In other cases, a tone of alarm creeps into the writing:

Facebook scares me a little because it holds all of this information on me that could

be used anywhere at anytime. All of my photos and what not are out there and

could be seen by anyone! However, I do not put anything inappropriate that I would

not want anyone to see.

The student felt that people are able to maintain some control over the risks involved, in

this case by monitoring and censoring what they post, even if the risks posed by what

other people might post is overlooked. The fact that corporations often change their

privacy policies was also a concern, as keeping on top of one’s consumer rights is seen to

be very difficult:


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I definitely feel controlled by Facebook, I feel like it is no longer a place to connect

with friends and family but rather a data base of personal information, and it is

constantly being updated and changed which shows that the only thing the company

is interested in is profit and improvements.

Other students felt even more strongly about the risks of the social media endeavours:

Anything you say can be used against you and can be used to ruin your life in the

future. This is especially true in the accessibility of photography on the internet and

that if a photo is taken of you it will never truly come down from the internet. It can

always be found in some random place and if it is inappropriate it can be used to

ruin your future or your present life.

Many feel that they can mitigate risk by keeping their audience in mind at all times:

More and more adults, including parents, teachers, and employers, are

beginning to use social media sites, and many have access to the accounts of

younger people. Your audience is no longer just your friends.

Others understand that an audience cannot be so neatly controlled, and so use chat

features to circumvent the risk of being seen by everyone:

When everyone can see what I'm posting, I take more care so as to make sure that it

is appropriate. However, there is also a 'chat' part of Facebook where you can talk

to one person individually. When using this function, I just say whatever I want

knowing that my audience is the one friend on the other side of the chat.

The attempt to maintain control of the social media setting can sometimes lead to extreme

measures. Some discussed how they would frequently quit Facebook in disgust at the

goings-on and the lack of control, only to keep coming back because they could not live


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without the social updates, or else they conclude that pictures of themselves are being

posted anyway so they had better join to keep up with how they are being presented by

others:

I don't like Facebook. I've tried to delete it about six times … Also the privacy aspect of

Facebook is so shocking that I don't want to put any of my personal material on it at all.

That's why I deleted my Instagram as well.

One student offered a strategy less extreme than quitting, but dramatic in its own way:

I plan on deleting most people once I am in university. “Friend cleanses” are very

popular, where high-school graduates delete those that they are positive they will

never see in their life again.

6. Discussion and conclusion

Although it is tempting to view technology as a neutral means to an end, scholars

in the field of critical pedagogy see schools as sites of conflict between competing

expressions and discourses of power, and the role of the teacher as key in helping to

educate students on how they can navigate a complex and potentially dehumanizing

environment. This environment can include consumerism, the tracking and manipulation

of online behaviour, and even the attempt to control and exploit psychological processes

and through that, the identity formation of young people. All of this suggests that “crucial

questions need to be asked (and hopefully answered) of how digital technologies

(re)produce social relations and in whose interests they serve” (Selwyn, 2012, 219).

Although these complex issues can often be hidden, one place that they can be discerned

is in the theatre during a school trip to see a live play. In the blue glow from the back row

is a manifestation of the conflicts swirling around teens and their portable devices. Here,


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power shifts from the performer to the viewer and the student’s focus moves from the

physical space of the theatre to cyberspace, from the drama on-stage to the drama on-line.

One kind of consumerism associated with high culture is replaced by another, associated

with devices, data, and commercialism. The ability of high culture to command attention,

and by the theatre to command respect, is challenged by the multifarious aspects of life

online: the gossip, the news, the friends, the shopping, the ongoing self-presentation, the

sex.

The student comments in this study confirm that cellphones are a powerful force

in shaping students’ experience of live theatre, either constantly tempting them to check

out of the theatre space to go online, or shaping their overall expectation around speed

and control. As in other aspects of life, etiquette around the use of these powerful devices

continues to evolve, with a roughly equal number of students either adamantly opposed to

cellphone use in the theatre out of respect for the other audience members and the actors,

or happy to give in to the temptation to text, update, surf and chat. Student awareness of

issues of privacy and control are similarly mixed, ranging from a total lack of awareness,

to hubristic denial, to smart self-editing, although many of the larger and most troubling

issues, such as those discussed by Andrejevic, are not on students’ radars. Whatever

qualms a student may feel about their lack of privacy online, it is often outweighed by the

imperative to be on-line: to find out what’s happening, to present an image, to know how

one is being viewed by others. This imperative eclipses other concerns, even during a live

play.

It is into these gaps of understanding that the teacher can step; there is no shortage

of issues to discuss, explore and navigate with students. How important is the liveness of


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theatre? How do our digital lives affect our experience of being human? What role can

live theatre have in allowing us to assert our fragile humanity? Why do we check our

smartphones during a trip the theatre—what is the source of their power, and what does it

say about our own power as individuals? What does it mean to pay attention? In the era

of constant connectivity and neuro-marketing, the need for sophisticated and well-

informed guidance by teachers is pressing. Within the Internet era they emerge as cultural

workers, or perhaps warriors, at the forefront of attempts to confront and mitigate the

powerful forces embodied within ICTs, powers that aim to reduce, narrow and refine the

terms of teenage life according to the needs of neo-liberalism.

(Word count: 5, 700)


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Powerful Devices: How teens’ smartphones disrupt power in the theatre, classroom and beyond

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