Is Facebook a Structural Threat to Free Society?

Re:Is Facebook a Structural Threat to Free Society? by c0nfused on Tuesday March 14, 2017 @07:11PM (#13872393)

I think that this an overstated case. Back in the "dawn" of online education I worked for a university where one school was swapping to using iPads for all their reading. You sign up you get and iPad with all your textbooks on it.

Initial polling was that students hated it from the get go. They wanted, needed textbooks. At the end of the first semester they did the polls again and, surprise, nobody wanted to go back to dead trees. Books are expensive and text search is amazing.

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Re:Is Facebook a Structural Threat to Free Society? by ethbro on Tuesday March 14, 2017 @08:31PM (#13872874)

We switched to laptops for every student when I was in high school. I'd say that, even pre-Facebook, it was a boon to increasing computer knowledge, a decrease to attention span, and about equal on educational outcome.

I loved being able to play ROMs during class, but the difference between looking at information on the screen and in a book? Not fundamentally different.

I'd say where digital information shines is in post-secondary education where you're beginning to perform self-directed research, for the reasons you mentioned. And some students have a modicum of self control by then... ;)

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