Sociality Is Learning
As adults, we take social skills for granted... until we encounter someone who lacks them. Helping children develop social skills is viewed as a reasonable educational endeavor in elementary school, but by high school, educators switch to more "serious" subjects. Yet, youth aren't done learning about the social world. Conversely, they are more driven to understand people and sociality during their tween and teen years than as small children. Perhaps it's precisely their passion for learning sociality that devalues this as learning in the eyes of adults. For, if youth LIKE the subject matter, it must not be educational. Unfortunately, I fear that we are doing a disservice to youth by not acknowledging the social learning that takes place during this period. Worse, what if our efforts to curtail social interactions out of a preference for "real" learning have professional costs?
Very few of us work in professions where we are forced to focus on one anti-social task all day, every day. Even academics, a notoriously hermitic bunch, have to interact with students, fellow faculty members, and perhaps grant makers at some point. Most of us are constantly relying on and honing our social skills, developing new techniques to communicate our message, navigate office politics, manage someone's expectations, and keep the peace. Those in service jobs face this in an acute way, having to manage irate customers and balance many people at once. Social skills are the bread and butter of professional life. So how do we learn them?
It's easy to point to middle school as ground zero of youth drama. The rise of status hierarchies combined with budding sexuality throws all sorts of relationships upside down. Bullying, social categories, and popularity are all there. But the key to "surviving" middle school is learning how to navigate these muddy waters with an intact self-esteem. It's not that jealousy and other social dramas disappear after middle school; it's that they get much more nuanced as people's skills improve. But for people to improve their skills, they must learn how to manage unpredictable and uncomfortable social situations. These aren't skills learned in abstract; they're learned through practice.
Over the last three decades, youth lives have gotten increasingly structured. Many youth spend little to no time in unstructured social settings, otherwise known as "hanging out." The practice of hanging out is consistently demonized by educationally-minded folks as a waste of time. Yet, it is in that space where youth learn to navigate social situations, make sense of impression management, and develop the social skills necessary to be productive adults.
Social media has created an interesting rupture in the landscape. Youth turn to it to reclaim unstructured social encounters, to create a public space that allows them to simply hang out with their friends, peers, and cohort. The flirting, gossiping, and joking around that takes place is not proof that social media is useless, but proof that it's extremely valuable. Without other spaces in which to gather, youth have developed their own. They want to be social, but we also need them to develop social skills. What's fascinating is that they're learning to do so in a mediated landscape, developing norms that will persist through adulthood. It's not like all social encounters between adults are face-to-face; learning how to interpret a Facebook post is a great skill to have when entering an email-centric corporation.
Rather than demonizing social media or dismissing its educational value, I believe that we need to embrace the environments that youth are using to gather and help them learn to navigate the murky waters of sociality. We cannot "fix" their social worlds, but we can provide the scaffolding that they need to help learn to make sense of sticky social situations. We can serve as listeners, guides, and cheerleaders. We can be there when they're trying to make a decision about a best way to handle a situation and play devil's advocate when they need to work through complicated dynamics. But to be there for youth, we have to treat them with respect and value what they're learning. We have to value the importance of learning about sociality. And we need to be able to listen as confidants, not judges.
We can continue to demonize social spaces, dismiss hanging out, and overly regulate our kids. But I believe this does them a disservice. Being a successful adult in society requires social skills. And we desperately need to give youth space to learn them. They're committed to learning; why aren't we supporting them in doing so?
Comments
I think Global Kids took a step in the right direction this spring when it hosted a series of cross-generational dialogues about digital ethics. Teens and adults got the chance to share their experiences and viewpoints on a range of issues about life online, including self-presentation and exploration, norms around friending on social network sites, online privacy, and illegal downloading.
Here's a link to the report that summarizes the event and its key takeaways: www.globalkids.org/meetingofminds.pdf
I figured since this is a post about sociality, and, as danah says, "we need to embrace the environments that youth are using to gather and help them learn to navigate the murky waters of sociality", I'd share a new report put out by Global Kids (full disclosure: I work there!), Common Sense Media and Harvard's GoodPlay project called Meeting of Minds, which based off of a series of cross-generational online dialogues about digital ethics that we held last Spring. You can check it out here:
http://www.globalkids.org/meetingofminds.pdf
Hope it's useful for folks!
I often wish I'd been a worse student and better at making friends. It may be telling that I'm reading this at home alone on the internet and it is making me feel lonely...
I think a lot of teachers and administrators also overlook the power of acknowledging digital domains as a way to show students that it's not only "their" space to socialize, it's a shared space that can be used professionally AND socially.
By entering their world- their digital world- we can curb cyber-bullying and teach them the literacy skills to effectively navigate the mediated world.
I agree with Todd as he states
It disturbs me how so many schools impose a content filter, creating a ceiling that mistakenly blocks students from developing literacies that will enhance their lives.
Part of the issue here in Ireland is that so few teachers especially Principals have the skill or indeed the courage to teach and encourage digital literacy.
There is some interesting work going on in Australia about 'allowing and monitoring' Web 2.0 content. the link is here:
http://www.educationau.edu.au/sites/default/files/SICTAS-nsi.pdf
I am increasingly concerned about how few teachers are current with online technologies and feel that the easiest way is to block them...
I agree partly with what you say, but there also has to be a balance.
I remember a particularly enlightening conversation with the system administrator at my school where he explained to me the reason that sites didn't allow access to sites with downloadable content was because, and I paraphrase here, 'Schools that allow downloads find their bandwidth used up by the afternoon'.
Also, how many parents would feel at ease letting their child access the pornography that is accessable on the internet? I remember accessing a free-to-view pornography site with comments attached, and being shocked when some of the commentors admitted to being 12 or 13.
This is precisely why I purchased my teen a cell phone. Philosophically, I was opposed to handing my kid a mobile phone. After all, I grew up without one, but I came to this point in my own self-discovery as a parent: deprivation does not make good citizens. I decided I would serve her better as a guide, assisting her to learn best practices, rather than ignore the fact that the world has changed and attempt (and fail) to cocoon her.
I teach a sophomore level general education class at a large public university. My classroom environment is one in which students are encouraged to work on word problems together (I love group learning for math problems). Although group work is strongly encouraged, it is not required. I find that many students work alone because they lack the ability to form a group which I must conclude is from a lack of social skills. Instead of learning together with trial and error present in daily class activities, students choose to work alone and struggle alone and thus experience error alone.
For example: Three such students this semester were constantly asking me if they were "doing this step right" for every step of the current class activity. After five or so steps, I asked them all to sit together and I explained the process of their common question with all three present. Two of them stayed put and worked together to accomplish the rest of the assignment, but the third returned to the back corner of the room and worked alone, having many more questions for me. I have no problem helping students who choose to work alone, but I do not think they will be as successful in life / future work experiences as the ones who know how to work together socially.
I agree with the thesis that adolescents need to be free to explore tech/social spaces. It disturbs me how so many schools impose a content filter, creating a ceiling that mistakenly blocks students from developing literacies that will enhance their lives.
As digital-social spaces proliferate, schools seem more and more airless.
tbf
Interesting blog post on the subject of social learning:
Social attention and interactions are key to learning processes
http://asc-parc.blogspot.com/2009/07/social-attention-and-interactions-are.html
It makes reference to an article:
[1] Foundations for a New Science of Learning. A. N. Meltzoff, P. K. Kuhl, J. Movellan and T. J. Sejnowski. Science, 325 (5938), 284-288. [DOI: 10.1126/science.1175626].
But of course, Learning 2.0 is generally about social learning. (read on the subject John Seely Brown)
thierry