Day 3: The Other Side of Social Media and Digital Residency

Social Media: The Bad and the Better

There was a lengthy discussion on social media (facebook/twitter etc.) and its application medicine and life in general. There are some seriously scary things going on out there guys – I’ve never thought about it before but what about the fact that facebook apparently changes what you see based on what you like, what you don’t like, what you have previously clicked on, is it similar to this and other such criteria. Social media also has an inherent bias to it; we are biased by this algorithmic decision of what we might or might not enjoy, but we also have to think about the following – how many of your friends are from similar backgrounds/political views/religious views/educational levels/medical beliefs and practices as you are? Forbes discusses this in the linked article – click here.

But it has its merits too and that, for me at least, balances out the good and the bad. We use facebook a lot; in my job, we have an official work facebook group to organise rotas, shift swapping, last minute cover etc. In university, even more than that, we use it share notes, resources, funny pictures to get us all through the hefty exam diet (come on we all do it – we may pretend we don’t but we do…) and general organisational communication. We use it for social events, organising parties, organising study nights or dinners and celebrations so social media is likely to become more and more important in education as we develop and share online resources…and a study showed that 61% of British Youth’s used social media as their primary source of news so why shouldn’t universities and tutors use it more and more for communication and teaching?

Digital Residents and Visitors

The first thing, and it is slightly off topic, but related to digital residents (and addicts!) In the first semester, we in third-year worked our way through our psychiatry teaching. One such topic was addiction. A lecturer used a screening tool called the CAGE criteria, which screens for alcohol or substance addiction, but adapted it for social media:

• Cut down – do you ever feel you need to cut down on your use of social media?
• Annoyed – do you ever get annoyed that your family/friends comment on your use of social media?
• Guilty – do you ever feel guilty about your use of social media?
• Eye opener – do you ever need to check social media before you get out of bed in the morning?

A significant amount of people in the room raised their hands to all four questions – at a guesstimate 5-6months later, I’d say at least 45-50% – and that includes me.

But back to digital residents and visitors

What do I mean by this, I hear you ask? Well, both are terms I have only heard of today but I’m going to try to explain them to you (with the hope that Natalie or someone else more knowledgable than I, corrects me if I’m wrong).

Digital residents: These are people who leave a trail behind on social media/online for example by posting on facebook, on twitter, sharing photos on Instagram, posting on blogs etc.

Digital Visitors: These are the people who go online to look for something, they browse through the web and use information, but don’t leave much behind in the way of comments, posts or anything that indicates their presence to everybody.

Of course, these are two ends of a spectrum and with each type of media, you will be at different aspects of the spectrum.

Below is a photo of my “digital residence and visitor map.”

But how likely is this to resemble someone else’s map? I feel like most students will have a similar map, maybe not with exactly the same things, but I feel like both institutionally and personally, students rely quite heavily on, both posting on and using, social media. The main differences I believe would be present are that perhaps others would not use things like Instagram or have a blog and many may not use Flickr or WhatsApp, preferring to use google images or facebook messenger instead. I do however think the facebook, twitter, email, google docs, google, searching online and medblogs (which for those who don’t know is the Dundee medicine online portal), will be pretty standard for most of my peers, if not just a little bit changed with their positioning on the spectrum.

I believe this would differ however if we stepped back a generation and looked at lecturers; I do not believe that many of my lecturers would be using facebook, for example, as a tool for learning and sharing resources. A large proportion of my own tutors uses twitter for medical related things and for teaching so that element would still be there. Depending on the tech-savvy-ness (is that even a word??) of the tutor, they may use blogs or Instagram, but I doubt these, particularly the latter, would be used for teaching or for working in the NHS.

There is not really very much that surprises me when I saw this, I know that I am fairly engrossed (unfortunately) in social media but I was a little surprised when I was thinking about it a bit more, that e-mail was quite so high up in my “personal” section…but then I use email a lot personally for online accounts and shopping, but feel like this dragged me towards the visitor end, whereas my institutional email alone would have dragged me more towards to the residency end because I send a lot of emails…especially if I need help with something; I’d much rather email than ring or talk face-to-face! And that might be the problem with my generation; because we don’t HAVE to talk to people on the phone, we all hate doing it!

I think that social media should be used in medical education; I think it brings something very important to the table. However I also feel that platforms like twitter for discussion can make some people (but surprisingly not me) feel uncomfortable; the “anyone can see what I’m saying, what if some person who’s spent 40years researching this tells me I’m wrong and I’m an idiot,” type-of-mentality comes into play here. However as I alluded to earlier, I think we as students have more of a motivation to use some sorts of social media, such as facebook than lecturers, for teaching and learning. But on the flip side, there are other technologies and online resources like padlet and text-walls that students wouldn’t dream of using in a million years unless a lecturer was using it.

I believe that not all students may understand the footprint they leave and I can only really comment on my own understanding, from the guidance I have received in my own degree. The GMC issues guidance on the use of Social Media for medical students and doctors and it was simplified (by a lecturer of ours) in a short sentence: “if you’d be embarrassed for your granny to see it, keep it away from the internet.” And that is a very fair summary; why would we want strangers on the street, who have never met us before, but might become our future bosses, to see us very drunk, vomiting on the roadside and falling over? It just brings ourselves and our profession, into disrepute and ultimately may impact you in the long run; if  I was an employer, I’d be wanting to look at your facebook page before I hire you too…

Part of this final question was to discuss if students understand how the data collected by apple/facebook/twitter etc. is used, I believe I made a dent in this at the start of the post, but until today I had not really put much thought into it and I imagine many of my peers haven’t either, except to consider what I have already discussed about the GMC’s guidance on social media.

Until Next Time!

Fearghal

(p.s. sorry I know this was a long one)