Guided Response: Select two of your classmates’ discussions and reflect on the article findings or main points presented. What further thoughts, reactions, or insights do you draw from the article summaries that your classmates may not have noted? Share this in your response posts. 

Emerging studies find that youth spend a considerable portion of their daily life interacting through social media (2011, Ahn). The article states that students fit in better with SNS because they can create who they want to be and disguise themselves behind fake names and identities. It also states that college students use SNS as a positive way to communicate with their peers. I think that social media is a great way to communicate as long as it is used in a positive manner. For example, many younger students that I have worked with used Instagram to start confrontations with other students which carried on to school ended up in brawls. But the article states that college students and younger adults are using social media and network as a platform to get information out and meet people with the same values as themselves.

References

Ahn, June. (2011). The effect of social network sites on adolescents’ social and academic development: Current theories and controversies.Wiley Online Library. Retrieved from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/asi.21540

In this qualitative study, Bauman and Baldasare (2015) discuss the issue of cyberbullying in postsecondary institutions and its negative effects on students’ social development. Over 70% of students in the U. S. currently use social media oulets to interct with their peers; this correlates with Keagan’s theory regarding college students’ need for validation and meaning in a community setting (p. 317). In this case, the reseachers administered a sample survey to  1, 114 random participants  enrolled at different American universities; the authors found that most students had directly experienced some level of victimization in an online social enviroment, and that males and females equally  experienced instances of cyber aggression (p. 320). In this case, acts of marginalization, unwanted contact, and humilation occured primarily via text and social media websites; in the majority of cases,  students who were part of fratenity and sorority organizations were most often targeted for abuse (p. 320). The researchers recommend that universities should raise greater awareness of this issue on campus; the authors also feel that individual instructors should address this issue at the classroom level.

While I think that the authors are well-meaning, I don’t think that their recommendations will work to any real extent. Our society can’t even get ordinary citizens to stop harrassing each other either in public or online, much less college students; I also can’t see how this becomes a responsibilty of the institution if the agression occurs off campus (and how would the university prevent this, anyway?). I do like the idea of professors bringing up the subject in class as a teachable moment; then again, I don’t know how effective such an activity would become for students.

References

Bauman, S.,  & Baldasare, A. (2015). Cyber aggression among college students: Demographic differences, predictors of distress, and the role of the university. Journal of College Student Development, 56(4), 317-330.