The Foothill College Author Series began April 29, drawing students, as well as faculty, staff and administration.  

The series began with author Craig Watkins discussing his research on the future of social media in the lives of today’s youth.  

In his book “The Young and the Digital: What the Migration to Social Network Sites, Games and Anytime, Anywhere Media Means for Our Future,” Watkins explores the digital world that has seduced the youth of today and perplexed those who have failed to understand or embrace it.

There is a gap between the “digital natives” and the “digital immigrants,” he said. What people can do with the technology and how educators think about technology, potentially using it as a tool in creating successful, digitally fluent scholars varies.

“It’s something we’re dealing with. It’s about how we manage it, and there really can be leverage points,” President of Foothill College Judy Miner said.

The session was a chance for the audience to think about the positive sides of tools that may be considered annoying or distracting in a learning environment, said Miner.

In a 2011 survey of college students at the University of New Hampshire, 65 percent admitted to sending at least one text message during a typical class.

“[Technology] is a tool that can assist in the development and cultivation of critical thinking scholars,” Miner said. She was pleased with the attendance of faculty from a wide range of disciplines including math, English, dental hygiene, art and veterinary technology.

Young people are saturated with the media, said Watkins. They are always connected and always exposed to digital screens. This was the basis of Watkins’ research, the “digital divide” between generations that has been accelerated by technological and social change.

What at one time was a gap between the technology rich and the technology poor, the have’s and the have-not’s is no longer a question of who has access, but rather the quality of their engagement and what youth are doing with their access, he said.  

“We are now all mobile in some sense,” Watkins said.

Through his research, Watkins discovered that there was a desire amongst the youth he studied to access mobile devices that specifically had expanded functionalities such as Internet, MP3 capabilities, cameras and video.

Uploading a video to Youtube or a picture to Twitter, responding to a blogpost or commenting on a friends profile picture via Facebook can be done in a matter of seconds. Access is instant and in a society where people are always connected, it may be hard to “power down” inside the classroom.

As technology advances, interpersonal communication is changing as well.

“I have a 16-year-old son and I always thought I was losing him,” Director of Facilities at Foothill Brenda Visas said. “After today, it’s good to know that I’m not losing him, it’s just a different way of communicating.”

Re-evaluating the way classrooms are set up is something that should be considered, according to Visas, who realizes the integral role that technology and mobile devices are playing in the lives of youth today.