5 must-use social media for 21st century students

You clicked! Are you also tempted by list blogposts and then find the content disappointing? There is a list at the end of this post, however.

When I asked my colleague Dave's class of 13 year-olds here in Northern Europe how many of them were regular users of Twitter, I expected, if not a forest, at least a copse of arms. Three. All boys. In a class of twenty. Further interrogation revealed that only one of the three used his account actively (to keep in contact with players of a particular game). Other classes turned up the same picture. Dave and I had planned to use Twitter as a means to generate real-time conversations among the students. They dutifully cooperated, but treated it as a quaint adult preference. We persevered for a short time then looked elsewhere.

[caption id="attachment_105" align="alignright" width="467"] Subjective selection of data by SW[/caption]

My finding was confirmed in an interesting spreadsheet of bandwidth use on our school's wireless network shared by Olivier, the IT manager. I extracted a subjective selection of sites which I believe are used largely during students' leisure time and generated a graph. Top of the list are four 'consumption' sites, followed by Snapchat which leads the social networks. That's Google+ resting his lazy butt on Twitter, Pinterest and WhatsApp.

The idea of online social networks is still young. If it was born in 2003 with myspace.com, then it has only just become a teenager. Soon Facebook surged ahead and has maintained that lead as it continually evolves. Twitter joined the pack but seems to be flattening out in terms of active users. Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram, PutieDami. When I told my students about the graph above, they were unsurprised that Snapchat is top of the tree at our school. I predict, though, that in three years' time, 13 year-olds will be communicating with a network we haven't even heard of yet. Who could have foreseen 10 years ago that the brevity of 140 characters would be so alluring, or that pictures that expired within 10 seconds would captivate a generation?

[caption id="attachment_108" align="alignleft" width="167"] Everyone has his own tech landscape[/caption]

Though claims of exponential change can appear exaggerated, social media platforms do seem to have followed an accelerating pattern. With growing frequency, each cohort of young people seeks its own medium which excludes not only their parents but even their older siblings. We do not know what will happen given that apparently big beasts can became evolutionary dead-ends within a few years; the social network ecosystem is savage.

There are consequences for our approach as educators. Many of us have realised that we must harness the power of the tools of the digital age, whose astronomical processing power and global reach enable billions to interact irrespective of geography. It makes the magic in wizarding fiction seem tame by comparison. But since your students may not be using the same tools as mine; since their younger peers are already looking elsewhere; since every tech start-up has the incentive to ensnare the next generation with novelty, what are the universal principles which will guide us in helping them to use the proliferating platforms beneficially?

It's all about communication. Do we comprehend each other? Do our exchanges promote respect and understanding? Are we making the world better? I'm not talking about digital social media here, but all of the ways in which groups of people can share ideas.

 

FIVE SOCIAL MEDIA ALL STUDENTS MUST MASTER

1 Language

Language is a medium for social exchange. We must teach our students to use it to convey meaning; to avoid misrepresentation and to develop new understandings between people.

2 Kindness

It is too easy to let our impulses get the better of us and to behave unkindly in the heat of the moment. We must help our students to recognise that there are myriad ways to treat others with consideration, each of which makes the world a better place.

3 Emotion

All human interactions have an emotional element. Our students must learn not to be afraid to communicate how they feel and to be able to read the emotions of others.

4 Critical Thinking

We have access to a virtually limitless ocean of information, much of which is unmediated by quality control. From an early age, young people must learn how to weigh carefully the words and images they are served.

5 Culture

The more we are exposed to different points of view and ways of living, the more we realise that what is familiar to us is merely one mode of being. Educators must help students to see that human experience is diverse and that no culture is superior to any other.