Digital Smarts - Hyperconnected Students Face How Social Media Affects Their Lives

Towson University in Maryland has launched a course called “Alone Together: Finding Intimacy in the Age of Facebook,” in which students are asked to examine how social media has affected their lives -- in both positive and negative ways. In the course, students explore how the need to be connected has affected them socially. Discussions include how the drive to get "likes" on social media has impacted their ability to communicate, and how it has even made students reluctant to disagree with others and avoid confrontation. The class has revealed that some students in the course are so hyperconnected that they sleep with their phones and even “fake text” when alone in public to appear as though they are connecting with others.