What challenges remain with this killer app? I suggest three: (1) user education, especially for adolescents and their parents; (2) new features connecting higher education’s missions to the popular site; and (3) legal and policy considerations on a global scale. Sensationalized and sad stories of teen-age suicides precipitated by cruel exchanges on social networking sites have raised the profile of information literacy and user education at early ages. Primary school is not too early, for both students and parents. For teen-agers, the emergence of “helicopter” parents has no doubt driven adolescents deeper into technological zones that are generally out of their parents’ hovering view. Unless an individual is particularly at risk, invading a teen-ager’s space is not the solution. But learning more about those spaces—how they operate, who is on them, and most important, how to talk about their social dynamics—is recommended. Parents can do that effectively only if they educate themselves about both the technology and the sociology of the Internet. And demonizing the technology, as is suggested even by such august public organs as Frontline, with its feature “Growing Up Online,” helps no one—not the youth who will undoubtedly use the technology, not their parents who supervise them, and not their teachers who need to understand the role that this technology plays in their development.
Source: EDUCAUSE (by Tracy Mitrano, Director of Information Technology Policy and Computer Policy and Law Programs at Cornell University)
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