Youth, Learning, and Social Media

Abstract

Returning from a conference on a flight from Dallas, I was struck by how, on a seemingly daily basis, we witness accounts of people altering conventional practices and connecting in new ways using emerging web-enabled technologies. As e-books outsell hard covers by over 40%, I should not have been surprised by Delta passengers tapping into the free Wi-Fi via their iPads and reading electronic book titles layered with links to extra content such as videos, the author’s spoken commentary, and increasingly, social reading options, such as note-sharing, social highlighting, real-time book discussions, ratings, tags, and links to Facebook and Twitter (Watters, 2010). We are witnessing similar trends in education. In the last 10 years, Internet access, the nature of the web, and contexts for learning have been transformed, and new desired competencies for learners, teachers, and administrators have emerged. Such shifts have impacted constructs for learning, instruction, and paths for future research (Greenhow, Robelia, & Hughes, 2009a, 2009b). Internetconnectivity in schools, homes, neighborhoods, and communities has become increasingly pervasive, enabling expanded sites for formal and informal learning. Moreover, technological advancements have contributed increasingly to young people’s adoption of social media, a term often used interchangeably with Web 2.0, to refer to online applications which promote users, their interconnections, and user-generated content (Barnes, 2006; Cormode & Krishnamurthy, 2008). Ninety percent of school-aged youth now use the Internet regularly, with over 75% of adolescents aged 12 to 17 using social media (DeBell & Chapman, 2006; Lenhart, Arafeh, Smith, & Macgill, 2008; Lenhart, Madden, & Hitlin, 2005).