Adolescent Identity and Literacy

I was fortunate enough to have my last two group projects somewhat reflect each other, in terms of what they are researching and ideas we get to dive into. For book club, I read “Just Girls” with my group, which discussed how junior high aged girls find and develop their identities. My article group has been reflecting on the ideas of adolescent identity and literacy. We have had the opportunity to delve into many different articles that discuss different aspects of adolescents and different sources they seem to find their identity from. Although we split up the readings between different members of our group, we each summarized what we read into basic thoughts to contribute to a greater idea of adolescent identity and literacy.

The article that I read and got to share with my group is called “Annotated Bib of Moje’s Work” (http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/3168). The main point that I got from reading this was that literacy in the classroom versus literacy outside of class do not correlate with one another. The skills that are tested in the school setting are not at all reflective of things that adolescents practice in their real life world. In the other articles, technology seemed to be the source of adolescent identity. Social media has played a huge role in the way that teenagers try to shape their lives; likes, dislikes, and the perception of how they should be. Adolescents feel challenged to make themselves conform to the general societal likes, as well as get their self worth from approval on social media.

https://prezi.com/fup8ltvcuxe5/identity-meets-internet-the-effects-of-social-media-on-adolescent-identity-development/

I found this Prezi presentation to be both relevant and helpful in explaining what we are learning, and providing back up information on our topic.