JOURNAL #3: The Case for Social Media in School

Kessler, S. The case for social media in schools [Web log message]. Retrieved from http://mashable.com/2010/09/29/social-media-in-school/

Summary: This is really tough because I do understand that students are all plugged into social media. They know how to use it, they like using it, in fact, it is very important to them to be connected via it. But there are down sides to social media. During research for a debate I had to do in an earlier Multimedia class, some very dark consequences to the use of social media were uncovered. A study done with 1,000 college students around the world revealed some of the following issues:

1) Media was addictive,
2) Contact made through media was shallower than personal conversation,
3) The more people communicate through social media, the less practice they have in reading body language which another study claims is 93% of our communication,
4) Students seem to stop ranking information by it's importance correctly, placing world wide news on an even level as someone's daily events,
5) Students tend to believe the information sent via social media without checking it out, and
6) students in the study found that social media contact seemed to hide the depression/isolation they were feeling but not acknowledging.

With the negative side delineated, let's go back to the article. I do agree with the topic lines for #'s 1 and 2: "Social media is not going away" and "When kids are engaged they learn better". Just because people like to drink and it will not be prohibited again, doesn't mean people should drink and drive for example. So just because social media is not going away, doesn't mean that it won't prevent a healthy way of people interpersonal ways of communicating and interacting. Sure, students learn better when they're engaged but are they only engaged via social media?

Point 3: "Safe social media tools are available--and they're free". Ok this is good. But once students learn the social media tools do they stick to only safe tools?

Point 4: "Replace online procrastination with Social Education". I'm a little confused by this point. I think it says that extra assignments (that were interesting) were posted on a social media forum and the students became so involved with these assignments that they spent less time on other social media. I think the main idea here is to have interesting assignments. If posting them on a safe social media forum makes them more interesting, ok.

Point 5: "Social Media encourages collaboration instead of cliques". The article says that a Rochester Institute of Technology study didn't agree with her on this point. I don't either. Students are still going to clique, just on line, I've seen it. I have no comment on point 6.

I do understand that instantaneous communications via social media is now part of our society. I think we have to get students to think deeper and spend more time communicating person to person to balance this part of society out.

Q.1 How can we prevent these negative side effects in our society?

A.1 We could have mandatory classes in high school that help students develop skills that are being prevented by social media. I saw a "health" class in Chino where they presented information on human communications but there wasn't any time where the students actually practiced it. There needs to be a class where they must communicate on a regular basis and it should be more than 140 characters worth of communication. There might also be a class where the students have to check their social media at the door and do indepth research without the internet. Or...

Q.2 Is this form of communication really universal?

A.2 Yes and no. I've been in some socioeconomically challenged schools where the students still have smart phones but I've been in other schools where a large number of students say they can't afford them (and I believe them). I assume our society will eventually have social media devices in such a "need to have" state that it will be like TVs or local phones where almost everyone seemed to have at least one.