I've never understood the appeal of twitter.

From what I have heard; Most folks who tweet and congregate on facebook are under the age of 21.
They aint doing it because they are techies either.
And from what lilttle I know it dont take a techie to do it.
But if that is your bag then good for you.

My phone does not even have I-Net capabilities and I dont care for it to either.
To me a phone is for VOICE comms.
In fact, I never use the camera on it either and I did not pick the phone for that option...it was just there.

My phone is now about 4 or 5 years old, so I am about to be in the market for a new one....
And even now, the main reason is that this one is no longer supported and it has to be re-charged too often for my liking.
As far as I know I cant even get new batteries for it.
I still wont get I-Net and still dont care about the camera that will almost certainly be on it.  

Social media tends to skew younger, and I think the crowd here is older than that group.

A lot of social media is garbage, but some applications of it are useful.  JUST LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law

(Personally, I generalize this to everything, not just art - people, cars, jobs, ideas, etc... and I think the percentage is low...)

Heh - yeah - sturgeon's law - you posted while I was composing my reply.

"CharlieSheen"

Duh, winning.

TheHistorian wrote:Social media tends to skew younger, and I think the crowd here is older than that group.

Yes and no.  Teenagers are a huge group on social networking.  Surprisingly, the other huge group is older women...50+ years.

As a teacher, I have been strongly advised against even having a Facebook page.

Mars wrote:
Just wondering why?

Your students will collect and use your personal information if they can find it.  I've seen them do it.  

You also don't want to give ammo to crazy, disgruntled parents.  Every teacher has to deal with these people from time to time.  Most people think they know all about education and they could do it better and...blah...blah...blah...bullshit.  It doesn't help when some people up the ante by being insane in addition to stupid.

Also, teachers have gotten in trouble before with Facebook posts.  People expect teachers to be more morally upright than they expect from themselves.

For instance, a teacher in Virginia was denied her teaching credentials because of a very mild picture she posted of herself intoxicated.

The typical teacher who screws up with social media is one who socializes with students online....which is a terrible idea.

And even if you take it down your Facebook page still exists, forever.

Mars wrote:All good general reasons but I think they all can be avoided by someone being responsible with their account, setting the proper privacy settings, not added students as friends, etc.  No one should really be putting too much personal info on Facebook anyway - it makes them ripe for identity theft.

If you want to add students or parents as friends then set up a class group account not use your personal account.

The problem isn't Facebook but more the people who use it.  I give lots of examples of poor Facebook judgement.  You should assume any employer will look at your facebook page, etc.  There are lots of examples where people have lost jobs or not been hired because of their Facebook page.  Some governments in foreign countries use it to look at people who refuse to do their manditory military duty on the grounds of religious beliefs - in cases where facebook shows pictures of them acting in a manner that also contradicts the religious beliefs.

Good advice Mars and common sense you would think, but you would not believe the amount of graduating college students (most the example I know about are women, but I assume men have the same issues) that, having grown up with social media, they seem to ignore any negative effects that might result from having all their personal information available.  One thing I forgot to add, when some candidates for jobs I listed above are confronted by their FB pages, they get defensive and angry, as if that's THEIR private information, and the company shouldn't care what they do in their off hours.  True, except if you have a high security job where you are trusted with, for example, military secrets, you are never really "off work" and must be extremely careful who you associate with when you are drunk out of your gourd at a beach party.  

BTW,my wife has a FB page with ZERO personal information on it, not even where she works or where she lives, which is acceptable standards at the place she works.

Mike B.