Keeping up with the Facebook and MySpace Generation: What Counselors Can Do |
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J. Barry Mascari Jane Webber Mascari, J. Barry, Ed.D, LPC, is an Assistant Professor of Counselor Education at Kean University, Union, NJ with research interests in licensing, counselor identity, trauma, and school counseling. He was President of the American Association of State Counseling Boards in 2006-2007 and serves on both the Professional Counselor and Marriage and Family Therapy licensing boards in New Jersey. Webber, Jane M., Ph.D., LPC, is an Assistant Professor in the Counseling Program at Seton Hall University, South Orange, NJ with research interests in trauma counseling and disaster response, multimodal assessment, and school counseling. She is chair of the ACA International Committee and was ACA Foundation Chair in 2001-2002. Based on a program presented at the ACA Annual Conference & Exhibition, March 26-30, 2008, Honolulu, HI. Dick and Jane, principal characters of the 1950’s reading series, set a standard of behavior for the lives of American children. They carried lunch boxes as they walked through safe neighborhoods to a school where everyone looked like them. Dick and Jane went home and played baseball with their dog Spot, as their stay-at-home mother made dinner in her frilly apron. They finished their homework and then watched black and white television. Dick and Jane grew up with the Disneyesque lifestyle portrayed in the film Pleasantville. Unfortunately, these heavily used school readers gave American children a distorted view since only a minority of people lived this idyllic suburban life without the intrusions of the modern world. Students of this era watched futuristic movies and television shows only to find that those visions have become reality: the Dick Tracey wristwatch two-way radio/television, Star Trek communicator, and portable music. Had Dick and Jane continued as a reading series into the Millennium, their lives would have been very different from the isolated, limited life they led; however, many adults still prefer that life instead of our technology-heavy world. The Technology Explosion Experience with technological innovations suggests that there is a significant span, often as much as 30 years for new technology to be fully integrated (Horrigan, 2007); that was before technological innovation occurred in the rapid succession of the post-modern era. Counselors and many other adults remain among those behind the curve in the use of technological innovations. According to Prensky (2001) who coined the following terms, technology users can be categorized into:
Stand outside most high schools or on college campuses and you will see students on cell phones, using Internet-capable handhelds (formerly known as phones), and laptop computers. According to the Yankee Group (2007), “72%of US teens are actively logging onto social networking web sites and 20%of US teens are already browsing the mobile web on a regular basis.” Our fears that technology will isolate us may be unfounded. Humans have a need to connect and stay connected to others, just in newer ways. In the 1960’s the media visionary, Marshall McLuhan proclaimed “the medium is the message”. He predicted a future altered by innovation even before the creation of the Internet and personal computers. Now, technology and knowledge increase at an exponential rate, making new communication ideas obsolete nearly as fast as they occur. The cyberspace world of students is limitless with estimates of 75 million Facebook and 100 million MySpace users. Students can search for anything, anywhere, at anytime on the Internet learning more on websites in an evening at home than all day in school. Many cannot imagine what it was like BG (Before Google). Can school counselors and teachers keep pace with the evolving student brain and infochanges that have transformed our new generation of digital natives? A few years ago the authors conducted a presentation called Dinosaurs or Future Travelers: Rekindling the School Counselor’s Flame. Counselors were exhorted to reinvent their profession in order to avoid being left behind in the transformation of schools. Today counselors need to make a giant leap into the techno-world of students. This online world has dramatically changed the nature of childhood and adolescence, and the way students communicate with others. Students now face a future where the only constant is change. Counselors must keep pace by embracing technology and, if we are not able integrate all aspects that digital natives use, at least we can understand their language. Digital Native Vocabulary Some important technology terms that will help readers unfamiliar with these innovations are offered:
Information Acquisition Has Changed In a New York Times Op Ed essay, Tenner (2006) noted that in 1898 when Harvard dropped Greek as an admissions requirement, academic decline was predicted. Shortly after the telephone’s invention, critics pronounced the death of writing. In the 1950’s and 1960’s all our knowledge worth sharing could be found in the slim volumes of the World Book Encyclopedia. Wikipedia is today’s World Book, dynamic, collaborative, and evolving as fast as one can click the enter key. The computer has catapulted children into rapid learning and information processing. Calculators eliminate tedious cognitive processes moving students through multi-step math problems that would take pages to work out with a pencil and paper. Students tell us traditional classroom instruction is dull, linear, and slow. It will take some time for teacher training programs to endorse the benefits and positive skills of children multitasking communication, information seeking, analyzing, and social networking simultaneously. Today, Facebook and MySpace are the social lives of adolescents; who can be anyone they want to be on these sites. The quiet, shy student can become popular overnight with an alter ego. Adolescents reinvent themselves every day, not through developmentally appropriate friendships and supervised clubs and teams, but by playing out their lives or pseudo lives to anyone with access to social network websites. They achieve instant fame, instant friends, instant boyfriends or girlfriends, and instant vulnerability by opening their developing inner lives to the world and to predators. There are other negative consequences of technology that include:
The use of the Internet and technology is not all negative. Consider some of the positive outcomes of technology:
Technologically rich environments are rapidly changing the brains of our children. According to Martin Westwell (n.d.) of The Institute for the Future of the Mind at Oxford, “You are who you are largely because of the way brain cells wire up in response to the environment and the things you do.” Parents and teachers know that today’s students are faster problem solvers. Prensky (2001) observes that research is indicating that current students’ brains have changed and their thinking and processing of information is different from previous generations. In the next century MySpace and Facebook may be the anthropological artifacts examined to understand today’s social and cultural changes. The impact of the most popular social networking sites has been the subject of cover stories and special awards by major news magazines. They applaud the positive impact of Web 1.0 both on individuals and the global sense of community. On December 26, 2006, Time Magazine named the new American icon “You” as the person of the year, crediting You as the originator of the new “digital democracy”. Time placed a mylar mirror on its magazine cover to reflect the reader’s image. McLuhan predicted the impact technology would have in the creation of the global village. Although Web 1.0 has had a revolutionary effect on the world, Web 2.0 is beginning to make drastic changes in the global society through online communities or “digital neighborhoods”. Social network theorists predict that Web 3.0 will impact social communities as more people indulge in online “game worlds” and “alternative universes”, creating alter egos complete with friends, homes, and pets. Students’ social lives on MySpace have evolved into a digital native culture with Internet friends and confidants in online neighborhoods and playgrounds. In addition to buddies they have in their classroom, students have potentially thousands of cyberfriends online. Howe and Strauss (2000) in Millennials Rising compared Millennials to second-generation immigration patterns, blending countries of origin, culture and education. Students are not living in isolation on their computers; they are connecting with people across the globe differently from previous generations. How can parents support and nurture children’s Internet friendships when traditional issues no longer apply? Who are you going with? What time are you coming home? You need to bring your friend home. Parents may never meet their children’s friends; maybe teens won’t either but they have real, valued cyberspace relationships. First Columbine, and later the Virginia Tech tragedy, underscored the importance of cell phones and Internet capable handhelds for student communication. The Virginia Tech student news staff relied on MySpace, blogs, and text messages to verify the deaths of student victims. Hundreds of thousands of students online mourned with the students at Virginia Tech using the same Internet tools that older adults feared would strip students of their capacity to be human. How Counselors Can Be Prepared The digital divide has widened between those who use technology and those who do not, especially across the generations. While people born after 1985 cannot remember a time when a personal computer did not exist, the authors and older Americans vividly recall their first color television, push button telephone, hand-held calculator (which could only add, subtract, multiply and divide), and their first desktop computer. Counselors must become more technologically savvy in order to know what students are doing and how they are connecting to others. Counselors need to understand that student Internet friendships are real, committed relationships fraught with the same dangers as blind dates and unsupervised high school parties. Counselors have a moral responsibility to keep pace with the evolving student culture. To avoid the path of extinction, like dinosaurs, counselors must change to help young digital natives and to help themselves to become future digital immigrants. The following counselor recommendations may help parents and students, beginning with activities to prepare themselves to help others. For counselors:
For students, counselors will need to:
For parents/guardians, counselors will need to:
Conclusion Technology has created a number of issues and anxieties in the modern world. Will children lose the skill to relate face-to-face, or can this new social anthropological development make them more personally connected? Simon Smith (2006), editor of Betterhumans, presents an optimistic view of technology:
Clearly, not all results of technology use are positive. However, counselors cannot hide from technology or allow the digital divide to leave them behind as innovations are continuing to be adopted. Only time will help us grade the report card for communication technology. What if Dick and Jane were still characters in today’s readers? References Horrigan, J. (2007, June). The Pew Internet and American Life Project. Retrieved October 12, 2007 http://www.pewInternet.org/pdfs/Typology.ObDeck.Final.pdf Howe, N., Strauss, W., & Matson, R.J. (2000). Millennials rising: The next generation. NY: Vintage. McLuhan, M., & Fiore, Q. (1967). The medium is the message. Corte Madera, CA: Ginko. National Center for Education Statistics (2005, December). Study of adult literacy. Retrieved October 25, 2007 http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2006470 Prensky, Marc (2001, October). Digital natives, digital immigrants. Retrieved November 3, 2007 http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky Smith, S. (2006, August 23). A rollicking debate on technology's impact on our lives. Retrieved October 26, 2007 http://www.usnews.com/usnews/tech/nextnews/archive/next030826.htm Tenner, E. (2006, March 26). Searching for dummies. New York Times, p. 12, wk. Time. (2006, December 26). Retrieved October 30, 2007 from http://www.time.com/time/magazine/0,9263,7601061225,00.html Westwell, M. (n.d.). The Institute for the Future of the Mind at Oxford. Retrieved October 29, 2007 http://www.futuremind.ox.ac.uk/sub_site/about.php Yankee Group Attitude & Behavior Surveys (2007). Retrieved October 31, 2007 http://www.yankeegroup.com/linkAttitudeBehaviorSurveys.do |
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