subject: Social Media Blackout at US College Comes to a Close [print this page] . However, following a week of social media absence on campus, it seems that the experiment has, at the very least, stimulated a significantly relevant discourse on the effects of social networking on the lives of students and staff alike.
The ban, initiated on Monday 13th September, was the brainchild of university provost Eric Darr, whose experience of his own daughter and countless undergraduates engaging on a multitude of social media sites in an increasingly complex and time and attention-consuming manner, encouraged him to instigate the campus-wide blackout.
The general idea was to gauge the impact of the ever-increasing activity on sites such as Facebook on the overall attention levels and academic lifestyle of the student body, as well as teaching staff. It was given an added level of credence in the light of a recent comScore Inc report revealing that US web users spend more time on Facebook than they do searching Google.
The shut-down of these sites gained a high level of publicity in the US, with the subject cropping up on NBC's Late Night with Jimmy Fallon show. Fallon in fact made a rather acute observation regarding the potential fruitlessness of the experiment, insisting that students assigned the task of composing essays based on their experience would title their essays: "We all Have Smartphones, Dumbass".
Although tangible results of the project will not be known until the publication of exit surveys etc., many students spoke of their initial reluctance at the withdrawal from such online activity, which has for some become a harmful addiction; students admitted to missing out on coursework deadlines due to their attention being distracted by instant messenger and the likes during class times.
For many students, the ban served to highlight the negative influence of an immoderate level of social media consumption. Despite some students going to great lengths to circumvent the prohibition (by travelling to a nearby hotel, or by hacking into the central university server), many immersed themselves in the experiment, seeking to experience life without Facebook, if only for a week.
That this social experiment was carried out in the first place indicates how deeply rooted social media has become embedded in our everyday lives. It is no longer a privilege, but a right and a requirement for any young student. The question is, how did we survive without these facilities in the pre-Facebook era?
The significance of social media today covers a range of interests, with the most conspicuous of those defined by their fiscal capabilities. As a set of conversion rate optimisation tools, social networking platforms have possibly the greatest potential for user-specific advertising. This is a potential which cannot afford to be diluted - not from a commercial viewpoint at least.
Social Media Blackout at US College Comes to a Close
