Monday, January 5, 2015

Thoughts About Educating for Responsible and Effective Social Media Use

My thoughts in the Google+ box below are on the New York Times piece about ThinkUp, a service that helps a person monitor his or her Facebook or Twitter account. Click the link under the image to read the article.

After my knee jerk reaction (as an educator, I feel pretty strongly that education is the answer to many of our problems), I've been reconsidering.  I suppose the founders of ThinkUp could make the argument that they are educating via their service as well.  And to be fair, the company does provide services (additional analytics) beyond helping people "act like less of a jerk online."

Still, my thoughts are that unless someone just doesn't want to think for themselves, and is unable to learn about the many free tools that are available to provide analytics for them in their use of twitter and facebook, most can manage without a service like this.

Perhaps I'm thinking too narrowly, I'd be interested in hearing thoughts from others on this topic. Feel free to comment.


(Full disclosure: I am beginning my fourth year as an adjunct instructor for master's level students on professional Identity management.)

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