Connecting Youth Around the World

“It’s simply about being human: creating, sharing, consuming ideas.”

In marketing courses, we learned that youth in different countries around the world often share more similarities with one another in their tastes, preferences, and decision making processes than they often do with older generations within their own respective countries.

Many are eager to express their views, share perspectives, and connect with like minded and passionate people around the world. The sense of interaction and personal branding opportunities has increased dramatically due to expanding mediums of communications and social media.

The leap in technology has allowed the speed and dimensions of communications to flourish from snail mail with pen pals to instantaneous communications that seamlessly incorporate audio, video, and multimedia. I remember when it took weeks for a letter to arrive from China and when making an international phone call cost a few dollars per minute.

It occurred to me while watching IT and Education in the 21st century that ICT and social media have almost been taken for granted and impacted our lives and habits much more than we may realize. Before social media, how did we conduct research, look up resources, or share a newspaper or magazine article that we liked? How did people around the world see our work, view our actions, and hear our performances?

In sum, it allows us learn and grasp information and knowledge with unprecedented speed and efficiency and it also allows us to give firsthand accounts of what’s happening around us. We become producers and get a sense of what our communities and networks think and feel about ideas that resonate with us. It’s heartening that I am able interact with my friends and colleagues seamlessly around the world.

Please watch IT and Education in the 21st Century and do share your thoughts and ideas on the subject with us.

Tune in Saturday, 5th of June on ETV at 8PM to watch the next episode which will showcase, "Social Media Networking at the Village Level in Sri Lanka."