MySpace, Facebook, and Students

Posted by Naomi Rockler-Gladen Nov 12, 2006

My media students have been discussing the role of digital technology in society, and I had a great conversation with both of my classes about MySpace and Facebook. In one class, I asked them how many of them had a MySpace or Facebook page, and only three students did not raise their hands! It's pretty amazing. These technologies were unheard of a few years ago, and now they're a huge part of the college student experience.

I asked them what they felt the positive and negative implications were of MySpace and Facebook. Of course, they had positive things to say about how their pages allowed them to communicate with old friends. On the negative side, students complained that these pages promote superficial relationships with a long list of "friends" you barely know. At the same time, the opposite problem is true: these pages promote excessive intimacy, as people discuss all kinds of things in detail to strangers that they never would discuss face to face.

One student said that his friends get mad at him because he doesn't check his homepage often enough. He said it's not enough for him to leave them messages on their cell phones anymore; he has to go online and "talk" to them.

Another student made an interesting point: a few months ago when Facebook changed some of its policies, students all over the country were in an uproar. He said that it was a shame students hadn't put that much energy into the midterm elections. On a related note, several students complained that personal homepages are repositories of pointless content, of people posting pictures of themselves getting wasted and babbling about their angst, as opposed to focusing on more serious issues. I'm not sure what I think of this argument. On the one hand, I most certainly would like to see my students become more politically involved. On the other hand, I question how big of a role personal homepages play in distracting students from more serious issues.

One of the most disturbing things my students told me was that the conflict resolution office is in the habit of checking the homepages of students accused of questionable behavior in search of incriminating evidence. Granted, students probably should know better than to write about certain things on their homepages. Nonetheless, this is a little too Big Brother for my tastes.

One thing that cracked me up: I asked one of my classes how many of them had ever manually turned the dial on a television set. Many students had not! Some days teaching makes me feel old.

I'm a geek, so I've got to say that I think MySpace and Facebook are really cool, and I wish they were around when I was a student. At the same time, these pages bring up interesting questions about the relationship between technology and society, and I think it's always healthy to examine this.

On a lighter note: apparently the grandmother of one of my students is a big fan of Internet gambling sites, and keeps downloading Spyware and viruses onto her computer. She blames her grandson for the viruses because he stores music files there. Grandma, if you're reading this: he's a good kid, and it's not his fault! Please be careful about what you download.

Oh, and please check out my satirical article about how technology could make classrooms obsolete.