Literacy

Teens learn valuable skills from using social media. Specifically, they become more literate. By using social media, teens gain ‘digital wisdom’. According to Mark Prensky, a scholar Boyd interviewed, digital wisdom is “creating empowering tools that enable understanding and empowering people to use existing tools wisely” (Boyd, 2014, p. 197). By using social media teens gain digital wisdom because they learn how to interact with others in a new way. When they use social media a lot, many learn how to use it wisely. Digital wisdom is a literacy skill. According to Deborah Brandt, literacy skills are skills of a certain sort and they are “a source of economic and social advantage” (2001, p. 171). Brandt also states that literacy skills are essential to the information age. The more skills you have, the better you are at finding and understanding information. By using social media, teens gain these skills and become more literate. Boyd believes that both adults and youths need to develop media literacy and technology skills to be active participants in our information society.