Wednesday, July 14, 2010
According to a Pew Research Center poll, a whopping 75 percent of Millennials, or people ages 18-29, use social media. That's 45 percent more than Baby Boomers, according to Pew.
If Millennials, people who have graduated from high school and, in many cases, college, use social media this often, what will these numbers be like for Generation Z -- people born in the mid 1990s to late 2000s?
A more important consideration may be not what is being taught to Generation Z, but just who is teaching these digital natives?
If 75 percent of young adults are currently using social media, which doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon, one must assume that 100 percent of Generation Z will be dialed into the powers of social media, when these youngsters complete their formal educations.
Furthermore, if social media tools, like Facebook, Twitter, Ning and the like, are primary teachers of Millennials, what will it mean to the future of our country, if Generation Z gets its infromation for social media, which we must assume will be even more prolific in the next decade?
Is it unreasonable to wonder if teachers will even play a role?
