Button It Up

Social Media’s Unearned Bad Reputation In Education

From improved heart rate, boosted self-esteem, to increased productivity, social networking sites offer surprising benefits. Your investment choices, your love life, and your enthusiasm for higher education can all be enhanced by social media. The evidence that social networking sites are a positive force in our lives is mounting.

Social Media's Unearned Bad Reputation In Schools My staff and I use social media to communicate with my customers, discover important news, exchange ideas with colleagues and friends, and broaden my views on important events and politics. It is such a big positive in our work that when I see negative articles about the “harmful effects” of sites like Facebook and Twitter … I find it a real head scratcher. To make matters worse, based on the purported “harmful effects,” some schools ban social media sites, some districts ban mobile technology because it gives students access to social media, and some states prevent teachers from communicating school business on social media sites.

It doesn’t make sense. How did a positive tool for communication get such a bad rap?

An Age Bias

There is a negative bias in reporting about social media by traditional news media. This bias results from the overrepresentation of older readers among newspaper consumers.

Americans age 45 and over are the age group least likely to use social networking sites. In fact, this group represents less than 20% of Facebook users and the group represents about 11% of Twitter users.

If my own experience is any indicator, a large portion of this age group is actively averse to social networking tools. I’m 49 years old, and listening to many of my peers talk about social networking is like attending a political rally for Luddites. The boast of “I don’t even have a Facebook account” is exclaimed loudly as if my friends were talking about refusing to join an unpopular religious movement.

Know which age group is way overrepresented among newspaper readership? Yep. You guessed it: Americans 45 years of age and older. In fact, according to ComScore, this this group is four times more likely to be reading a newspaper than folks in their 20s.

Might newspaper coverage of social networking skew toward their most loyal demographic? You bet. Like preaching to an evangelical choir, newspapers often run articles focused on the purportedly harmful impact of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Newspapers want to give the readers they still have a comfortable place to read and spend their time, and negative articles about the effects of social networking are just the sort of validation this group seeks.

An Impact of Education Technology

What does it matter? To understand the full impact, you would need to check with the states banning teachers from communicating with students using social media, check with schools that block social media for students, and visit school districts that ban student’s use of mobile technology due to the devices’ easy access to social media. In these places, educators are fighting to have a basic tool my staff and I use every day.

Also, check on the median ages of the legislators and school administrators who set such policies. My guess is that the decision makers are, on average, over 45 and comfortably in the demographic that just doesn’t get the value of social media.

I understand that there are some teachers who would rather not have mobile technology and social media in their classroom. Fair enough, but shouldn’t that be a decision the teacher makes and not a decision by a policy maker who lacks a basic understanding of social media and its tools?

My business and I benefit from social media each day, and I find it a shame that schools have to fight to have access to those benefits.

29 May 2012 ·