Teaching students about social media - teaching your grandmother to knit?

Glancing through my morning twitter feeds I came across Saturdays featured article from the education forum edudemic. The article lists "6 Things To Teach Students About Social Media" and these things are indeed something I have also pondered and found relevant social media concerns over these last 10 years. Things like;

Be careful about your online reputation,
Control whats private and whats public,
Build a good strong network,
Express your expertise and develop your interests online
Know how to buy stuff online

and so on...

This is all quite sensible yes, and the article states that, in this day and age, these things should be as important a subject in school as algebra. It does however set off a somewhat doubtful whirlwind in my head... mostly centered on the thought, who are we to teach the new students ANYTHING about social matters in the digital world, in which they are natives and  someone like me (born in 1980) is still an immigrant, albeit a deeply integrated one.

The boundary between public and private has been shifting rapidly since the very start of social media and naturally it will continue to do so. The norms and expectations regarding the use and the discourse of social media is also constantly shifting. My mother is baffled by the way my brother and I use and express ourselves on Facebook. I am baffled by the way my 14 year old nephew uses and expresses himself on Facebook. And in his case we are talking about the kind of digital native, who cannot remember the first time he used the Internet. Who probably never really thought of the Internet as an entity apart from himself, that was not just a natural part of his own extended nervous system. Seriously, these kids are Hybrids and Cyborgs!

Of course kids need to learn how to navigate social media just as they need to learn how to navigate the playground and the classroom, and in the beginning, in some ways, we can point out the pitfalls.But the world of social media is a rapidly changing cosmos and they are the ones who will be giving it shape, not us. So we might say things like "future bosses will examine your online stuff so be careful about whats out there!" like mentioned in the edudemic article. But I cant help thinking, 6 or so years from now, when my nephew is trying to enter the workforce in his field of choice, how much will the general expectations of public narrative have shifted? The entire face of social media might even have changed and I am certain, that unless I keep my ears firmly and continuously pressed against the touch pad to catch every little rumbling of the digital ground, he will have a much better grasp on it than I.

I mean look at this kid. Observing this one-year old navigating a tablet and then becoming frustrated when the extended nervous system fails when dealing with a paper magazine, sends a little tremor through me, at the sheer pace in which everything is changing. And what do you really think you or I will be able to teach this soon-to-be young person about navigating social media?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXV-yaFmQNk