Mod­ern modes of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and social inter­ac­tion have been of hot debate for many years now. Many crit­ics believe that social net­work­ing sites and mobile tech­nol­ogy act purely as dis­trac­tions and deter­rents to our stu­dents’ edu­ca­tion. Very few of us can deny that social media becomes a dis­trac­tion for any­one who uses it from time to time, but that doesn’t mean that total dis­missal of the phe­nom­e­non is the right route to take. As social media and mobile tech­nol­ogy con­tinue to gain in pop­u­lar­ity and preva­lence among the younger gen­er­a­tion, crit­ics of the medium may need to reeval­u­ate their judg­ment of the per­ceived pest. Social net­work­ing sites such as Face­book and Twit­ter and com­mu­ni­ca­tion modes such as instant mes­sag­ing and tex­ting may hold an impor­tant place in pri­mary edu­ca­tion in years to come. And why shouldn’t they? Stu­dents obvi­ously enjoy inter­act­ing through Face­book, Twit­ter, and text messaging—why not uti­lize that enthu­si­asm within the class­room? Here are three rea­sons to embrace social media and net­work­ing within the classroom.

Social Media Is Here to Stay

We can only deny it for so long. But, the fact of the mat­ter is, social media isn’t going any­where and stu­dents are going to con­tinue using it regard­less of how much we pun­ish them for bring­ing it within our class­rooms. An impor­tant les­son to learn for any par­ent, teacher, or indi­vid­ual is to pick your bat­tles wisely. We are not going to be able to elim­i­nate social net­work­ing sites and social media just because we are ban­ning it from our stu­dents’ class­rooms, so why are we fight­ing it so vehe­mently? With 73 per­cent of teens between 12 to 17 active on social net­work­ing sites, it seems we as edu­ca­tors should respond to that immense and wide­spread inter­est among our youth. Ban­ning social media and cell­phones from our schools is likely more of a waste of time, energy, and resources than it is worth.

Stim­u­lated Engage­ment and New-Found Voice

Once we actu­ally decide to embrace social media and mod­ern com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­ogy, there are many things that the tech­nol­ogy may have to offer our class­rooms and our stu­dents. Part of the rea­son that social media and social net­work­ing are so pop­u­lar has to do with its pub­lic­ity. Mid­dle school­ers and high school­ers have some­thing impor­tant to gain from being more vis­i­ble to and heard by their peers and men­tors. We as edu­ca­tors and men­tors to our young pupils seek to give them voices and show them their sig­nif­i­cance in a world that can often feel unin­ter­ested in the young per­sons’ inter­ests and con­cerns. Social media and net­work­ing plat­forms pro­vide a won­der­ful way to give young stu­dents a more pub­lic voice. Things like blog­ging and mir­coblog­ging (Twit­ter and Face­book) help stu­dents find greater pur­pose and engage­ment in their work. They feel they are not purely doing an assign­ment for a teacher or a grade—their friends will see it and other peo­ple on the web may see it (in the case of a pub­lic blog). There is a sense of pur­pose and power in this that is extremely impor­tant to find as a teenager in today’s society.

Put Simply—It’s Read­ing and Writing

Social media and mobile technology—Facebook, Twit­ter, blog­ging, instant mes­sag­ing, text messaging—each intrin­si­cally encour­age one of the foun­da­tions of education—reading and writ­ing. Text mes­sag­ing and social media have come under attack many times in the past for encour­ag­ing poor gram­mar and trun­cated lan­guage. Because the com­mu­ni­ca­tion plat­forms have char­ac­ter lim­its, users are forced to shorten their dis­cus­sions and limit their lan­guage. How­ever, as many an Eng­lish teacher will attest to, is this brevity really a neg­a­tive thing? Not only are stu­dents who use text mes­sag­ing and social net­work­ing intrin­si­cally using writ­ten com­mu­ni­ca­tion and read­ing skills in their every­day lives, they also gain lessons in con­cise writ­ing and read­ing com­pre­hen­sion through the exer­cise. Eng­lish and lan­guage teach­ers should embrace these plat­forms for writ­ing, read­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tion because stu­dents are so attuned and pas­sion­ate about them. Any prac­tice in read­ing and writ­ing is a pos­i­tive thing for young stu­dents and find­ing ways to incor­po­rate a student’s every­day habits into their aca­d­e­mic habit can be a very pos­i­tive thing.

Though as par­ents and edu­ca­tors we may not under­stand social net­work­ing, social media, or mobile tech­nol­ogy, don’t rule out the expla­na­tion that we’re just too old to really get it. We should find ways to embrace the things that our youth are pas­sion­ate about and uti­lize them within edu­ca­tion and acad­e­mia in a way that is pos­i­tive and productive.

By-line:

This guest post is con­tributed by Kath­eryn Rivas, who writes on the top­ics of online uni­ver­si­ties advice.  She wel­comes your com­ments at her email Id: katherynrivas87@gmail.com.