(Disclaimer: This is not meant to be a characterization of generations… just something I have noticed around the past few months)
I gave a lecture to a couple of classes at Purdue University last week about Social Media. You know… everything they could possible want to know. It was an introduction to the power of social media marketingfor small business in the present and future. I noticed something that was fairly surprising to me as a Generation Y social media user. The majority (and when I say majority I mean 99%) of the students used nothing but Facebook. I am talking about nothing. No Myspace. No Twitter. No StumbleUpon. No LinkedIN. They all used Facebook. 
Many would think that the majority of Generation Y (or millenials) would be using all forms of social media they could get their hands on.. apparently not so. This also applies to my friends. The only platform the majority of my friends use is Facebook. Why is that?
The light finally dawned when I read a post by David Armano explaining the evolution of social media from SOCIAL to NETWORKING. There is a disconnect between college students using other tools because frankly… they THINK they shouldn’t need to. Think again.
There needs to be a huge push in higher education towards social media education. Graduates should be taught how to use LinkedIN and Twitter to job search. They should be told about sites like Brazen Careerist and Careerscribe and NOT about Monster and CareerBuilder.
Education needs to shift HARD to new tools and not to whether your resume should be copy and pasted into the email or saved as an attachtment. Give me a break.
I worry that the new work force is not being taught to utilize the world of social media for networking and link building.
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I’ve seen it on my college campus too. Less than 1% are using Twitter. Few take advantage of the wealth of information on the Internet too. What’s crazy about it is that it’s not hard to jump into and it differentiates students as they search for jobs as well!
I think the college students haven’t seen the need for networking. They’ve got their friends, and those are the people they’re concerned with. I know when I was in college, I never considered that the older people I knew and met during my time would, or even could, play a role in my career.
I think if students were to see that professionals could be an important part of their job search, they would embrace those tools more readily.
[...] The Generation Y Disconnect on Social Media (kylelacy.com) [...]
I gave a talk at Marist College business club to about 60kids. 1 person had heard of twitter.
A big gap is the ideas of using social networking for business and not just fun. All we have known is facebook and finding our friends at school on it and seeing their pics from the weekend. It’s hard to think of it and other networking tools as business oriented.
Same here. I faced a sea of blank stares when I asked for a show of hands of who used Twitter. I often see this same expression when discussing with my clients about social networking apps, but University seniors? Same thing was told to me. They said they don’t watch TV or get advice from friends, but rather get influence from MySpace and Facebook friends, most of which they never met before!
Hello,
Fascinated by this post. I am taking an online teaching certificate course and writing a paper about the effect of social capital in online college classes. Do you have any references or know of any articles that explore this concept?
Thanks for you suggestions.
uberbabyboomer
Great article. Businesses try hard to market to Gen Y, but don’t really understand where to find them. So what I got out of the article is to understand where your audience hangs out.
I agree with you that Gen Y should explore other social media tools. This will serve them well in the future. Anyway you look at it, social media is the future.
very nice post,,, thank you Kyle
I think that graduates are not aware yet that social media is not only for contacting there friends,, but if it used proper can help them to promote there qualifications and getting there dream job
they need to aware of importance of social media and trained to use it for building relationships and develop there career
Ghada
http://www.doubleurincome.com
Really? No myspace? I checked out Purdue University and found Purdue University-Main Campus at http://school.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=sc... with Members (39748) and Current Students (15789).
[...] The Generation Y Disconnect on Social Media (kylelacy.com) [...]
You are deluded for thinking that people NEED to learn all about social networking sites. I am interested where your blindness comes from.
How about teaching people face to face social skills. Social skills are deteriorating… but maybe you are endorsing that we all get plugged in to The Matrix (which in 100-200 will exist in some form as humans obsess over immortality).
Glenn Batuyong said: "schools do have some obligation to prepare students for the real world"… however the real world isn't about immersing ourselves in to virtual worlds and disconnecting with each other in the real physical world.
[...] The Generation Y Disconnect on Social Media (kylelacy.com) Filed under: General Information Tags: Education, Facebook, FriendFeed, Higher education, LinkedIn, Twitter, Web 2.0 [...]