Don’t let young people trick you into believing they are digital experts because they are so adept at texting, taking photos, and incessantly tinkering with their smartphones. My experience teaching college students suggests that they are consumers of everything digital, with little understanding of how the digital world works or how it affects them.
Since students are always scrolling through TikTok or Instagram stories, I naively believed they would be experts at creating a post for a fictitious client in my Digital Marketing Practicum class. It was shocking to discover how their ability to create posts about themselves on social media did not translate into developing content about an actual product. Most students were unable to create meaningful posts about a product without considerable assistance.
Except for a very few who aspire to build a significant audience, most students only occasionally post photos and messages about themselves. They say it’s because they don’t want their social media presence to appear as if they’re trying too hard to get attention from the 1,500+ followers they’ve accumulated since high school. They explain that their posts are rarely spontaneous because they spend a day or two considering whether a photo is appropriate to place on a social platform for others to see. The only time they might share a photo spontaneously is with a very small group of 10 or so close friends who are in their texting group.
My students are the ultimate consumers of social media who blindly accept the negative effects of algorithms controlling what they see online. They freely offer up their viewing and purchasing data to social platforms, believing that it is the best way to receive content that will interest them. They recognize an unhealthy addiction to their phones but brush off the fact that it may be causing them depression and anxiety.
It’s no picnic trying to teach my students. They are not accustomed to learning new ideas because the online algorithms have trained them to only pay attention to subjects they are interested in. Additionally, their preoccupation with only wanting peers to see what an ideal life they lead prevents them from speaking in class. If they don’t answer a question accurately or make an inappropriate comment, they fear exposure for not being perfect as their online persona projects. Plus, they all exhibit the anxiety and fidgetiness caused by the overuse of phones.
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Professors are beginning to adapt to this new reality of students. They are experimenting with multiple ways of letting students know the classroom is a safe environment for expression. Some start class with a five-minute meditation to rid students of their anxiety. Others offer snacks and flavored seltzers to build trust and likeability. Older professors ratchet up the decades-old fear quotient but soften the delivery with longer office hours and more supportive emails to their students, even before the semester begins.
The traditional Socratic teaching method no longer fits students in the digital age of misinformation. Instruction requires building deeper levels of trust so students can break out of their algorithmic learning patterns and become open to discovering new ideas that they haven’t considered before. Professors can no longer walk into a classroom and simply start lecturing. They must continue to experiment with new ways to connect that help students better manage their obsessive addiction to technology.
The most effective method I found was to spend more time listening to students. My years of professional experience and academic research have taught me how to influence consumers with digital communications. However, it wasn’t until a student tersely said to me in class, “stop saying that about how students post photos; you are wrong” that I realized my expertise in digital was at best limited. It didn’t include a deeper understanding of how students use social platforms in their everyday lives to speak to one another.
Closely listening to students is an acquired skill. It doesn’t come naturally to those who enjoy the clout of university pedagogy. Developing strong listening skills may be the only way educators can build classroom trust in a culture that is in constant flux due to the influence of new technologies. If educators really want to help students deal with some of the dark sides of technology, then they must spend more time understanding the problem from a student’s perspective, rather than their own.
While students may not be experts at using social media for commercial purposes, they are experts at using it for communication with friends and as a form of daily entertainment. I may be able to teach them how to use social media and ad technology to sell products more effectively, but they must teach me how they utilize social media and why they depend on it so much in their daily lives.
The only way this is going to happen is for me to talk less in my class and listen more to my students.
Image by nenetus on Adobe Stock; Asset ID#: 235985705
