In an age where the Internet is a key communication outlet, especially for students, Harrisburg University of Science and Technology in Pennsylvania will block social media sites from their server for a week.
According to a statement from the school, students and faculty will not be able to access websites such as Facebook, Twitter or Moodle.
Steven Infanti, a Harrisburg University spokesperson, said the blackout is not occurring because there is animosity toward Facebook or other similar websites, but rather to have students and staff think about how they use the technology.
The idea for the blackout came from Eric Darr, provost and executive vice president of Harrisburg University, who noticed his daughter holding conversations on both her phone and Facebook. After consulting other staff members, they noticed the same habits in either their children or themselves.
The project has been positively accepted by the roughly 800 person student body, Infanti said. He added students have shown interest in the experience, which may help them find ways to move social media forward.
“We are all about technology here,” Infanti said. “We embrace it and think strategically about it.”
Infanti said the project aims to help both students and staff evaluate how social networking weaves into their professional and social lives. He cited Dunbar’s Number – an idea about the number of social interactions a person can have at the same time – to point out how few of his nearly 800 friends on Facebook he interacts with regularly.
“I could post that I need help moving and around maybe two people would show up,” Infanti said.
Infanti said if they feel the need, students could leave the academic center and use the websites at a different location before returning to their studies. He added students he has interacted with have told him they will just use their phone to talk to people again.
It is unlikely University of Wisconsin students will face a similar rule in the future, associate professor of Educational Communication and Technology Kurt Squire said.
“It just would not be practical due to our size,” Squire said.
While studies have been done at UW about the use of websites such as Twitter for back-channeling while teaching, there would be no way to require students to participate in such an affair, Squire said.
Some UW students said they were indifferent to the thought of blocked social networks.
“Would I still have my phone”? UW Sophomore Kirstin Feldmann asked. “Then I would be okay with it.”
Squire mentioned he felt the practice of periodically turning off such services and then seeing if that had a negative or positive effect on life was a good practice even he does periodically.
As Harrisburg heads toward their weeklong social media blackout there may be little worry for a loss of communication.
“We are a culture of conversation,” Infanti said. “The students will jump to the next technology quickly.”
