By Chris Bergeron/Daily News staff
MetroWest Daily News
Posted Nov 13, 2011 @ 11:01 PM
Last update Nov 13, 2011 @ 11:04 PM
If your gonna let your kidz use social media u shd reed this. :)
Stopping by Dunkin' Donuts for late night coffee, three Framingham High seniors disputed some educators' claims that the prevalence of social media - text messages, Facebook and Twitter - is lowering the reading and writing skills of their generation.
Yet the trio of 17-year-olds largely agreed growing up digital might inhibit social interaction by substituting electronic connections for emotional ones.
Several high school and college teachers, administrators, librarians and medical researchers don't share the students' benign view of their contemporaries' increasing reliance on Twitter, Facebook and blogs for information.
Robin Welch, principal of the Woodrow Wilson Elementary School in Framingham, said the Internet "can be a wonderful educational resource" but he bemoans "the lost art of spelling, grammar and writing."
"I think Twitter is terrible. Along with instant messaging, it negatively impacts how children communicate. If they use it a lot when they're young, they have a harder time in the upper (grade) levels of distinguishing good from bad usage," he said.
At Wellesley College, Lynne Viti, senior lecturer in the writing program, said, "There have always been speech codes," whether in the 1960s or now, and "most students" distinguish between the way they should communicate in the classroom and in the peer group.
Since social media functions around the clock, she said one of its most dramatic effects seems to be cutting into students' sleep.
"It's definitely more than a double-edged sword," said Viti. "There's no question but it affects how we process information."
"I think if anything we're more socially connected to our friends. If I didn't have a cell phone, I'd have to walk to their house," he said.
After more than 20 years teaching at Wellesley, Viti said students now confuse Googling a subject with performing genuine academic research that requires library visits and document searches.
"Students need to take a more critical view of what they find online. You have to control its use in the classroom environment. I don't want to see laptops open or students won't be talking to each other. The key thing is to set some rules about its use," she said.
Will Cook, chairman of the English Department at Framingham High School, believes social media has encouraged some people who weren't frequent writers to express themselves online. But he has other concerns.
"I think the most detrimental aspect of the new technologies is that it has dampened and impeded the growth of the imagination," he said. "It's making kids somewhat anti-social to the point they tune out their surroundings."
The three Framingham High seniors aren't so sure.
Sporting a cutting edge Apple iPhone 4S, Pierre Youssef estimated he'd sent between 700 and 800 text messages that day to his wide circle of friends.
"I've got unlimited service. Sometimes kids text someone they like. But they might feel awkward meeting them face-to-face," he said.
Along with his pals, Mario Laurofa and Jonathan Healy, Youssef received his report card that day and the trio got all "A's and B's" with just a few C's.
The most active texter in the group, Youssef said his grades and writing skills have improved along with his increasing use of social media, adding he'd just received a "B" in his English honors class.
"There's a significant part of the population who'd be disinclined to write anything. At least these kids are texting, writing emails and communicating via Facebook. I think they're writing more than they would've 20 years ago," he said.
Healy, who estimated he had sent about 50 text messages on Thursday, rejected claims the frequent use of social media has anesthetized his peers, entombing them in a digital cocoon.
"I think if anything we're more socially connected to our friends. If I didn't have a cell phone, I'd have to walk to their house," he said.
Healy, who plans to study business in college, said most teens easily distinguish between the fragmented syntax and abbreviated vocabulary often used online with "the real English we use on tests and essays."
The trio generally agreed frequent use of social media can "distract" students not just from their studies but outdoor activities and personal interaction with others. They also believe girls are more likely to become "deeply involved" in social media than guys.
While teachers at several grade levels expressed concerns about social media's impact, there's little agreement on exactly how it's affecting students and what should be done about it.
After teaching English for 18 years, Cook has come to believe the electronic devices generally lumped together as social media "are doing as much good as harm" to students.
"There's a significant part of the population who'd be disinclined to write anything. At least these kids are texting, writing emails and communicating via Facebook. I think they're writing more than they would've 20 years ago," he said.
To provide a distraction-free learning environment, Cook said Framingham High School enforces a "schoolwide rule" prohibiting use of electronic devices.
However, he must occasionally correct students who use abbreviations, like "u" for "you" often employed in social media, in schoolwork. And he worries the "fragmented shorthand" commonly used in text messages leads to "writing and thinking in fragments."
Cook still assigns complex books like Homer's "Odyssey" and wonders whether some adults, who rarely interact with children, have fallen into "that easy trap" that "kids today aren't the way we used to be."
Professor Desmond McCarthy, who teaches literature and journalism at Framingham State University, suspects educators worrying about social media are like parents and preachers in the 1950s who objected to children listening to rock 'n' roll or watching Elvis Presley gyrate.
While he "hasn't seen a decline" in writing skills, McCarthy suspects the enforced brevity of Twitter messages and rapid-fire way many students send emails and text messages affects their social interactions rather than assignments.
"I think we who didn't grow up with this technology are more fretful of what its impact on the young will be than the young themselves. But the young have a better sense how to use it and compartmentalize their methods of expressing themselves precisely because they grew up with it," said McCarthy.
"In the 1990s, people were fretting that emails would affect how people communicated. But our kids are still learning to write a business abstract."
At the Learning Center for the Deaf in Framingham, high school English teacher Dynnelle Fields said her students feel electronic devices help them learn to write English, which they consider a "second language" with a different syntax than American Sign Language, their primary way to communicate.
While the teachers of "hearing students" might feel tweeting and texting encourages bad habits for writing English, she said using social media helps deaf children learn English but "doesn't take away from ASL" because they're different kinds of communication.
"In the 1990s, people were fretting that emails would affect how people communicated. But our kids are still learning to write a business abstract."
Fields said social media provides "more opportunities" for her students to communicate with other deaf children as well as hearing students, which would previously require hand-written notes or familiarity with American Sign Language.
"I've heard from parents that their (deaf) children's English is improving because they've been texting," she said. "The more exposure our children have to English the better. It helps them think and work in English and have more chances to interact with hearing people."
Several educators based their concerns about social media on "intuition" or "conventional wisdom" but said they hadn't seen scientific studies or reliable data to prove it, one way or the other.
David Bickham, a research scientist and pediatrics instructor at the Center for Media and Child Health at Children's Hospital Boston, said definitive studies have yet to be done for the most current aspects of social media.
He said, however, the American Academy of Pediatrics has taken the position that children two years old and younger shouldn't be exposed to "screen media" which only appears to them as a jumble of indecipherable impressions.
Bickham said studies have shown that when young children see violent images on screen they're using the same part of their brain that "recalls traumatic experiences."
While scientists can't document the impact of media saturation on children's brains, he said studies have shown that infants pay less attention to toys in front of them when a nearby television, particularly with sound, is on.
While children learn from well-researched television, Bickham said they can be inadvertently conditioned "to expect certain learning presentations" with lots of bells and whistles that parents and teachers can't compete with.
"We have accepted portable social media into our lives without considering the long-term consequences," he said. "We do need to educate our children to be good digital citizens."
Drawing a comparison with social media, Bickham said immersion in social media could lead to a decline in social interaction.
"We're living through a grand social experience. If we don't constantly critique it with scientific thought, it's going to go out of control. We should be aware and identify the most positive uses."
In other words, :(, rite?
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