Reality TV to Reality Smartphone

The Work of Being Watched has numerous insights that, while I’m sure they were eye-opening in 2004, are old news now. The proliferation of social media in our lives has made many of the points raised by Andrejevic mundane and unsurprising. The main reason for this, to me, is the element of interactivity. I doubt he could have imagined the level at which we are able to participate in and produce our media content.

Andrejevic consistently speaks about the ability to post on blogs or respond to a celebrity, but with the rise of smartphones, that rapidly became easier. With smartphones, people have constant access to updates from their favorite shows, sports, and their peers. Here, the peers element is the essential one that reality TV does not concern as fully. Instead of watching strangers on TV, you can watch the lives of your ‘friends’ as they play out, just as they watch you. In being a “full” participant of social media, you sign on to have your actions watched anytime, by anyone. Just as each Big Brother contestant ended up filling a role, each person on social media receives a categorized identity. On page 41, Andrejevic writes, “the i that designated “interactivity” overlaps with the I of identity thinking.” Not only can they “find themselves,” but they can create themselves as well.

Another place where Andrejevic’s analysis of reality TV could be applied to the use of social media and smartphones is on page 44, where he discusses the “[dedifferentiation of] the pursuits of leisure, consumption, and production.” As people relax by scrolling down their instagram feeds, they are producing data, and in ways I don’t think I fully understand, producing revenue. They are also paying for a phone plan, wifi, and whatever else they need to access this “leisure” time. Watching a movie on Netflix or listening to a song on Spotify have also become social, as you can connect your accounts with social media and share with you friends what you are consuming. To take it one step further, it could be related to dating apps and the way that people use their leisure and consumption choices as tools when marketing themselves online. All in all, while the reality TV formats that Andrejevic discusses are a little outdated, the logic used to analyze them is useful in examining the role and function that smartphones and social media hold today.