Yahoo News, as part of its "Born Digital" series, asked students and parents to write about how college has changed over a generation. Here's one perspective.
FIRST PERSON | In the fall of 2011, my step-daughter Meghan became a student at Colby-Sawyer College in picturesque New London, N.H. The college scheduled a seven-hour program designed to ease the transition for students and parents. Most of the hand-wringing parents fretted over letting go.
But my husband and I worried more about devoting an entire day to saying goodbye. Students and parents took pictures of each other with their smartphones and posted them to Twitter and Facebook.
There were tears, there were hugs and there was Wi-Fi.
By the time we made it back home to Boston, Meghan had updated her Facebook status and sent us several text messages. With all of this social networking was there ever really a need to say goodbye?
In 1981, my mother dropped me at the curb of Greensboro College in North Carolina with a sack of clothes and the only electronic device I owned, a fancy clock radio.
"Good luck!" she shouted, never removing the cigarette from her mouth as she sped off.
The only way to stay in touch with her was a pay phone or pen and paper. I used the phone to order pizza, and the only time my pen hit paper was to finish homework, usually the night before it was due. I was on my own. I never sent my parents a letter and never called. Al Gore had not yet invented the Internet and the founders of Twitter, Facebook and every other social networking platform had yet to be born. The next time I saw my mother, which was at Christmas, she complained about the beard I had grown.
Don't get me wrong, technology offers wonderful benefits. My daughter Sophie, a 22-year-old senior at Radford University in Virginia, is completely wired. I log onto the university's portal to check her account, keep up to date with school news, school grades and, of course, load money onto her cash card. She can submit her homework and perform research online and keep in touch with her professors via e-mail. In so many ways I envy the ease of communication that today's college students have at their fingertips.
But that method of communication has downsides. When my 20-year-old daughter, Marisa, entered Roanoke College last fall, she found herself the target of bullying by her roommate. The attacks were exacerbated by Twitter and Facebook postings. There is an immediate gratification -- well-intentioned or not -- that today's social networking provides. Often, children and young adults do not process their emotions before declaring them for the entire world to see, including their parents. This can have devastating effects. Fortunately, college administrators were quick to respond, reprimanding the roommate and moving Marisa to another room.
There is no doubt that electronics, social media and the Internet have vastly improved the college experience, but sometimes I believe that same ease of communication keeps children tethered too closely to their parents and stunts their emotional growth. I get several text messages a day from my daughters and attempt not to reply to their frequent Facebook status updates, which often include gems, such as "This place sucks!" or "Yay, I think I might pass this course!"
I'm grateful when I look back at that day when my mother deposited me curbside to fend for myself. I grew up quickly, and she was spared from the knowledge of my daily angst. But a good Internet search engine and restaurant delivery app sure would have been handy.
http://news.yahoo.com/first-person-technology-lets-college-students-stay-connected-175000621.html
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