Communication in the Digital Age

As I began to think about the continued debate on whether students should or should not be allowed to use social media in education, I started to the about the following connection. Isn’t the social media world of today just the way that many people communicate during the Digital Age? Isn’t this type of social media similar to the way that people interacted when they wrote letters or called friends. Throughout the years communication has evolved in ways that have allowed us to be connected in shorter amounts of time. People throughout the years have craved  immediate feedback, conversations, and interactions with others and that is why communication has changed over the years. So now instead of being connected only through written letters or phone calls, we are able to push a send message or update button on computers and mobile devices in order to communicate. I know that this form of communication has many negative views but the truth is that it isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. The history of communication will continue to evolve just like so many other things around us. So as educators maybe we need to work on modeling the appropriate way to be a digital citizen. If we can look at it through this lens and help students to understand how to effectively communicate through social media then we are helping our students. We are helping our students to understand how to represent themselves throughout the world using the appropriate social behaviors and communication.