The perils of facebook
I’ll not say much on this one, but I’ll be adding it to my list of files that I’m compiling for ideas that students need to be exposed to.
Facebook Can Get You Fired, Dumped, And Yes, Evicted
I find it interesting that the Stan Schroeder points out “These folks should not have trashed this lady’s house, of course, but posting photos of it for everyone to see is obviously not a very smart thing to do, akin to slapping them onto a wall on the street.”
Seems to me that the fact that the house was trashed and that the renters fled before getting evicted is downplayed because really they should have understood how to better use facebook. I want to rant a little about misguided social norms, but instead I’ll simply say that this simple proves my point about the digital natives.
Simply put being born into an era in which technology is omnipresent does not grant kids a superhuman abilty to use technology effectively. Sure some kids can text faster than I can talk, but if they can’t understand how to apply those techie skills beyond figuring out where the next pit party is, or don’t yet understand that what you put out on the Internet is actually accessible by everyone then those skills become rather meaningless.
Only when you harness the skills that some of those digital natives possess to some critical thinking will you see effective technology use. And as we’ve been working for years trying to get students to become more critical consumers and producers of information it seems unlikely that technology alone will affect some grand transformation (except possibly negatively).
So…some digital natives were evicted because of their postings on facebook. My question for the digital immigrants is… Would you have made the same mistake?
I’m guessing no.
