We may think that all the people on social media are either marketer or a consumer. That’s not the case, some people are using social media to express themselves to a larger audience, to socialize with others, to showcase their talents to the world and the rest to educate. In an article by Dr. Shock with the title “Social Media Use by Medical Students” :
Social software or the use of Internet (Web 2.0) for generating your own content, to connect with one another and to share and manage content with each other is used by young people. How do first year medical students use this social software? This could be important because these networks could become networks of learners as soon as we’re able to create useful applications.
- over 90% of med students use instant messaging, 94% of females aND 93% of males
- 70% used social networking sites (facebook, twitter, myspace)
- 20% read blogs
- 8% write their own blog
- 20% of male medical students contributed to wikis and used media sharing sites such as flickr and youtube
- social bookmarking was hardly used (delicio.us, digg)
How was this study done?
All first year medical students (n=212) at the University of Leeds completed a paper based self-administered questionnaire at the time of their information skills (IT) assessment.
Overall males were more engaged in social media. The use of these media has increased over the years. In previous research in 1973 80% of students used instant messaging, 24% used social networks, 31% shared photos, blogs were read by 38% and 21% wrote a blog. A survey in 2006 at the University of Oxford showed the high use of instant messaging (82%) and social networking (60%), 58% read blogs, 38% wrote their own blog, 19% used flickr, 57% used YouTube and 19% used del.icio.us.
The social networking sites have exciting potential for medical education but only if the educator can resist the temptation to meddle in what the students are doing.
Social media offer us so many ways to use it, it is totally up to us and our creativity and motive on how to make these ways possible. Imagination is the limit, but the intents are to be checked also. As long as it is for the development and not for destruction, social media will always be our generation’s friend.
