A Social Media Blackout (Sort of)

Eric Darr is the provost at Harrisburg University of Science and Technology, and he’s banning Facebook and Twitter from his campus. Well, only for a week, and only sort of. Darr is interested to see what happens when access to certain social media websites (as well as certain collaboration tools in the campus’ course management system) are blocked from the campus network for a week. That means no Facebook, no Twitter, my MySpace, and no AOL Instant Messenger for students, faculty, or staff all week–at least on the campus network. The “social media blackout” is intended to encourage the Harrisburg community to reflect on how they use social media by examining the effects of not using it for a week.

My initial reactions to this news:

Um, MySpace? College students aren’t really using MySpace these days. They’re not really on Twitter, either, for that matter. This is effectively a Facebook blackout, not a social media blackout.
Campus network? The provost does realize that many students, faculty, and staff have smart phones that bypass the campus network for Internet connections, right? Especially those at a “University of Science and Technology.” (I can see a cheeky bunch of students coming to class one day this week and spending the entire hour surfing Facebook on their smart phones as an act of protest.)
Why target social media and privilege those (mostly faculty and staff) who use other means of communication, collaboration, and networking? Why not, maybe, ban all committee meetings for a week to see what happens when faculty and staff are forced to get things done using other tools? Or shut down the campus email server for a week? I understand that doing so wouldn’t affect the students so much (since, apparently, email is for old people), but it would certainly make life more interesting for faculty and staff. Or why not go one step further and mandate that all university administrators must conduct their work over Facebook and Twitter, avoiding email, phone calls, and even face-to-face chats? Might that also give the campus plenty to reflect on regarding the roles of social media in our lives?

It looks like Harrisburg is planning some interesting events in conjunction with this social media blackout. (Yes, I just linked to the university’s RSS feed. Wonder if that will disappear next week, too.) It’s quite possible that this experiment will foster meaningful dialogue about social media on campus. But might those conversations be enriched by sharing them with the wider world, too, via social media? As Ethan Zuckerman pointed out in his recent (and fantastic) TED talk, we’re remarkably provincial in our use of social media as it is. Will a social media blackout improve that situation? I kind of doubt it.

What’s your take on Harrisburg’s experiment?

Image: “Telegraph Key” by Flickr user photobunny, Creative Commons licensed.

6 Responses to "A Social Media Blackout (Sort of)"

Robert Talbert says:

September 12, 2010 at 3:44 pm

Actually, apparently people still use MySpace. The PR folks at IU-East say that it’s their students’ #2 most commonly used social media platform, behind Facebook and way ahead of Twitter. And that is apparently true nationwide.

That said, what a silly idea this is. First of all, who appointed this guy lord of people’s communication choices, to create a mandatory outage so people can “reflect” on their usage? Doesn’t he have a university to run, or something? Second, as you say, this little academic exercise is so easy to route around it’s ridiculous, so the only thing people will be reflecting upon is how behind the curve their institutional leadership is.

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Maria Andersen says:

September 13, 2010 at 11:57 am

This seems fair, just as long as they do as Derek suggests. I’d suggest they block lecturing for the next week, and see what happens. Only question is how to enforce that one.

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Stephanie Chasteen says:

September 13, 2010 at 5:25 pm

This type of “media fast” actually isn’t so new. See the post by SidneyEve on our site from a few months back — http://theactiveclass.com/2010/04/06/tech-fasts-millennials-unplugged/. She says this is the sort of thing that GenXers impose on GenYers. She says: ” Do students in higher ed today fail to articulate about the place of mobile technologies, social networks, and digital media in their lives? Not my students. In fact, no awkward (and some would argue, unethical and heavy-handed) tech-fast assignment is necessary in order to get students passionately engaged in excellent discussions, reflecting, critiquing, questioning, and contextualizing their everyday media use. All we need to do is create opportunities for them to share and discuss, online or off.”

But she does agree that there are benefits to creating some awareness around the uses of technology, and I agree. I don’t think it’s silly. Especially since often students aren’t aware of how “digitally distracted” they are, and how these types of things are affecting their schoolwork. Just because he’s interested in raising awareness doesn’t mean he thinks these things are necessarily bad. These are powerful tools, with some potential for mis-use, and we are interacting with people in fundamentally different ways than we were 10 years ago. Isn’t that worth some reflection?

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Robert Talbert says:

September 14, 2010 at 6:16 am

@Stephanie: I don’t disagree that reflection is good, but I do think making reflection mandatory by way of a planned “network outage” is both doomed to failure and extremely heavy-handed. Why not just treat students like adults and *invite* them to reflect on their social media use?

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Stephanie Chasteen says:

September 14, 2010 at 8:38 am

Because there’s no accountability there… that’s like my doctor suggesting that I “reflect” on whether I’m getting enough exercise. The only way that I will is if there’s some accountability or push. That said, I agree that the heavy-handed approach isn’t great. I found this really nice blog post over at AcademHack, where he outlines some possible alternatives to the top-down fasting approach: http://academhack.outsidethetext.com/home/2010/social-media-fasts/

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derekbruff says:

September 14, 2010 at 8:26 pm

@Maria: “Block lecturing for a week.” You’re a hoot.

@Stephanie: “All we need to do is create opportunities for them to share and discuss, online or off,” says SidneyEve. Setting up a useful context for this can be challenging, but I’ll agree that given the right opportunities, students will jump right into these kinds of reflective activities. (See my hot-off-the-presses post about getting students to talk about academic integrity, for instance.)

@Robert: I’m with you that this seems heavy-handed. Why a whole week, for instance? Why not, say, 36 hours per Mark Sample’s “Great ProfHacker Offline Challenge.” Given the utility of social media, a whole week seems excessively disruptive.

I’m looking forward to hearing what comes out of the discussions at Harrisburg. I listened to an interview with Paul Buchheit, who created Gmail and FriendFeed and now works at Facebook, on the IT Conversations podcast earlier today. He mentioned that the sharing of Facebook status updates can help people go more deeply more quickly when they run into a Facebook friend in real life. Instead of mindless small talk as the two friends try to find something to talk about, one can say to the other, “Hey, I saw on Facebook your son was sick last week. Is he feeling better?” The Harrisburg students might be discovering that their face-to-face conversations are more awkward yet less satisfying.

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