The Myth of Tech-Smart Young People

Image by Mosi. Retrieved from Flickr. Used under Creative Commons' licensing.
Image by Mosi. Retrieved from Flickr. Used under Creative Commons’ licensing.

In a recent post, we found out that young people are losing the art of having a conversation. It turns out they might not be as tech-smart as we thought either. In a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Eszter Hargittai explained how most young people don’t realize what kind of message they are putting on Social Media. “The way that most students find jobs or connect with people is not by mailing out resumes,” Mr. King says. “It is by people finding each other on social media.” This gap in student knowledge led Northwestern to create a 10-week course called “Managing Your Online Reputation.” The course “seeks to train students to build robust, productive online identities through which they can engage topics of interest, command audiences, and advance their careers.”

“Assuming that young people know all they need to know about technology means they often don’t have opportunities to learn or ask questions” Hargittai says.

Are your schools teaching their students about their online identities?