Digital Literacy Narrative

One of the most prominent memories I have within the scope of digital literacies is asking my parents for a gmail account. I was in the 6th grade, so I would have just turned eleven years old. I knew of other friends who had email addresses, and my older sister, who is six years my senior, had one. I was so incredibly jealous that everyone got to message each other through gmail, and I told my parents that "the only way I could start acting like a young adult was for them to treat me like one!". I truly linked this digital literacy to my inherent worth as an adult even at eleven years old, even if I didn't realize that at the time. I spent weeks coming up with potential email addresses, relentlessly begging my dad to let me sign up for my first email. Eventually, he agreed, but he stuck me with what I thought was the worst personal branding that any eleven year old could possibly have to endure. That is, he decided my email would be "monkey7799@aim.com". I thought it was horrendous, but I was so excited to finally have one. The first person that I emailed was my sister, and I remember begging my dad to help me learn how to download a cute picture from the internet to send to her. In learning this digital literacy, I learned how to send an email, download images, and I loved customizing my home page. I don't even really recall sending very many emails, but I do remember making sure my homepage was the ultimate reflection of me. So, you better believe I had a pug as my side image with a pink text color for my emails. This digital literacy was my first sense of how to use a computer, and it helped prepare me for the following literacies to come.

Having a myspace account was one of the most important experiences that I had in learning how to use a computer and in learning how to socialize. Much of my family already had myspace accounts by the time I was about ten or eleven years old. And, much like my experience with wanting an email address, I wanted to use the same digital literacies that my family was already using. This is also an example of how quickly literacies can spread, but only if one has access to them. Once I was able to create a myspace account, I was completely enthralled by what it had to offer. I was so amazed by being able to stay connected with my family members that I didn't get to see all time. However, the part of myspace that excited me the most was being able to have a fun profile picture. I actually asked my mom to take a photoshoot of me so I could choose the perfect picture that best represented me. Naturally, eleven year old me chose shorts, a gray t shirt, and a blue fuzzy hat to wear during the shoot. While I did learn how to use a camera and how to choose a god profile picture, I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to live down the fuzzy blue hat phase! In learning this digital literacy, I learned how to talk to people using social media. I felt more connected to my family, and I learned how I wanted to represent myself on a public social media page. While I may no longer choose to represent myself with a black background a rainbow stars, the experience set me on my way to creating more professional-looking website creation in the future.

I spent so much of my free time when I was younger playing Neopets that I still remember my username and password by heart, and I could probably log in right now and still remember exactly where I left off! Oddly enough, I had never considered this a stepping stone in my digital literacy journey, even though it has probably had more of an effect on me than any of the others that I can think of. Neopets, in my eyes, was all about collecting items and selling them in my shop. Because of this, I wanted my shop to have a really interesting design and layout so that my customers would want to keep coming back. Throughout my social media and social gaming experiences, the most important part was to have my webpages look nice and reflect who I was at the time. I was incredibly particular in making sure my webpages looked nice, so I actually took the time to learn how to code my own backdrops and before long, I had made my own Neopets webpage exclusively linking the codes to pictures or backdrops that I would make. People would come look at my pets' person pages to find dozens of avatars, backgrounds, and charms that they could add to their own pages using code. I never considered creating code for others to use as learning a new digital literacy, because I just thought I was having fun creating images that I wanted to use! Learning to code helped me considerably when I took computer programming classes in high school, and it helped me feel more confident in using a computer. I usually tend to think of myself as pretty digitally illiterate, but even though I don't code anymore, I still possess the base level skills necessary to learn how to code or pick up other literacies in the future.

By the time I started using Facebook, most of my friends and family already had accounts. This made learning to navigate it's interface much easier than if I were learning it on my own. Learning how to use a new social media through my friends and family is a digital literacy in itself. Learning how to learn new things is incredibly important, and it makes trying new literacies easier in the future when you know you can have help figuring them out. Much like my previous experiences with digital literacies, though, I also used this one to present to the world who I think I am with a pretty layout, and a carefully selected stream of images and links. Learning how to use facebook has been one of the most important steps to my digital literacy journey. Facebook completely shaped my life, because my entire family was using it. Unlike myspace, however, I felt as if Facebook catered more to my specific likes, and I was able to learn more about topics that interested me just by looking at their webpages as well. I was able to better connect to my family who lived farther away, and it also taught me how to carefully select who I chose to be friends with. On facebook, I began to learn how to critically assess facebook accounts and messages, and I learned how to tell who were real people and who was okay to be receiving messages from. The most important function I gained from learning how to use facebook was online safety in general. In addition, it allowed me to share some of the most important parts about me, which helped me learn more about myself as well. For the most part, I had never considered how learning facebook as a digital literacy impacted my life, but it has been an incredible stepping stone to learning other literacies and new forms of social media that I may not have learned otherwise.

Learning how to type is perhaps the most functional digital literacy that I acquired growing up, one that I never considered as being an important skill until I was an adult. When I was younger, I was obsessed with Spongebob Squarepants. I would come home from school and watch reruns while I did my homework, and I even had a sponge bob blanket that I slept with every night for much of my childhood. At some time in my childhood, my parents recognized the importance of learning to type and matched it with my love of computer games. So, one year for Christmas, they gifted me a Spongebob Squarepants typing game. This game came with several levels for the player to beat, all which revolved around the player learning to type to save the characters' days. The first few times I would play the game, I would get really frustrated with it because I wanted to type quickly but couldn't do it, so I quit playing it for a long time! Once I came back to it, however, I learned how to type better so I started enjoying it much more. I eventually learned to type much faster than I had been before, and I learned how to type without looking at the keys hardly at all. Learning to type through this game has been an invaluable digital literacy in my life. I would go on to have computer classes that required typing skills. In addition, I would take many standardized tests on computers, so it was beneficial to be able to type as quickly as I could think so I could finish my tests in time. This game also taught me to how to be more patient in my learning, and that tasks that seem difficult at first can become easier with practice. Even in my adult life, I am typing or texting constantly, so having typing is an essential foundational digital literacy in my every day life.