That’s right, Harrisburg University of Science & Technology did an experiment in the fall semester, banning social media on campus for a week. The goal was to encourage the students to think about their reliance on these communication tools and their impact on relationships.
The experiment was the subject of hundreds of national media stories, and of course I was dying to hear how it went! I had the pleasure of interviewing Charles Palmer, the Executive Director of the Center for Advanced Entertainment & Learning Technologies. We discussed:
- how the idea came about
- whether or not the goal of challenging people to think about their reliance on social media was achieved
- reactions from students and faculty
- if the experiment facilitated any unexpected results or consequences
- and if the University plans to take any further action based on the results of this experiment.
I’ve got both the audio and the text (similar to my interview with Yale Psychology Professor Dr. John Dovidio) and will post them in bite-sized articles, but I’ll put them all up at the same time next week. You are welcome to subscribe to this blog via email so you don’t have to remember to visit. Just enter your email address in the box in the top right corner of this page.
Thanks for reading and I hope you’ll come back to hear about the social-media-ban-experiment at Harrisburg University! In the meantime, I wish you a joyous holiday season, and a healthy and abundant 2011!
