The use of social media is deeply embedded in American culture, forcing classroom settings to adapt to the evolving online medium and tailor toward students whose lives often revolve around Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Many teachers across Mississippi State’s campus utilize electronic mediums, such as PowerPoint, and social media to effectively relay their information to students in the classroom. 
Assistant Professor Whit Waide of the Political Science and Public Administration department said using social media and other electronic means of conveying material unnecessarily complicates the teaching process.
“This may be just me, but I’ve yet to see what social media, and what all this technological garbage brings to the classroom experience,” Waide said. “I just think it’s unnecessary. It’s not my style. It’s not what I do.”
Waide said bringing technology into the classroom becomes a crutch for some teachers and takes away from real teaching. However, he said he recognizes these are good tools that some teachers use in an advantageous way for students to learn.
Waide said in the past he has had an active presence on Twitter, voicing his opinions on many controversial issues and gaining as many as 10,000 Twitter followers. He said his connection with the university caused him to be more cautious about his posts to the social media site, which would reflect, either positively or negatively, on MSU.
MSU’s social media guidelines for employees states there should be a clear distinction between personal and professional uses of the networking sites. It also said an employee should not incorporate the university’s name in their username for the site, and the employee should never attempt to speak on behalf of MSU.
“When your social media activity is observable by end-users, stakeholders, and/or other professional audiences, your behavior should represent you well and reflect positively on the university,” the social media guidelines said.
Chandler Gurley, a junior majoring in communication studies, said through courses emphasizing the use of social media in the professional workplace she sees social media as the modern day business card.  
Gurley said social media can be used to promote the individual using it and make them more recognizable as a professional to future employers. She said social media often plays a role in getting job offers, or even, job interviews.
“We don’t live in an age where everything is private anymore. We live in an age where everything is public,” Gurley said. “Social media isn’t for everything in your life, it’s for certain things in your life.”
Philip Poe, an assistant professor for the department of communication, said regardless of how a teacher views social media in their personal life, teachers should strive to meet students on their level in regard to social media.
“It’s just a different way of looking at the world, and clearly, I’m in the minority,” Poe said. “I do have to try to understand those motivations, those gratifications that come from using social media.”
Poe said part of his job is showing students he is knowledgeable about social media and its evolving use in the news industry. He said adapting his course to incorporate social media and to bring in guest speakers with an expertise in the field can better exhibit how a professional uses social media daily.
Poe allows the use of laptop computers in his classes, although, he said he recognizes this is a disincentive for his students to pay attention to the lecture. 
Waide said his classroom policy bans the use of electronic devices of any kind. He said his students must listen to his lecture and put pen to paper to take notes.
Poe said social media is not necessarily a hindrance to the classroom because there have always been distractions in the classroom, even before cell phones made them much more accessible and entertaining.
“So I try to increasingly bring that stuff into the classroom because I understand that’s what students need, and it’s my job to give them the information that I determine they need moving forward,” Poe said. “I say it a lot, but if you’re not in college to prepare yourself to be a professional, what are you here for?”
Poe said the importance for students to learn how to use social media properly cannot be overstated because every post to a social media site lives forever online and creates a trail for potential employers to follow.
“That’s the point I’m trying to make in everything I do and say in the classroom is that you’ve got to learn what skills you have and can accentuate and that are marketable, and social media is certainly one of those skills,” Poe said.
Poe said he welcomes new ways to utilize social media, both in and out of the classroom, as a way to engage with students on their terms. He said he is increasingly asked by students to help refine their online profiles to better display what employers want to see, and he admits he needs to be more up to date in this area.
Poe said he is constantly trying to improve how he teaches his writing-based classes because everything but the letters and words themselves changes.
Gurley, of Amory, Mississippi, said having an online presence is important for self-promotion during a job search.
“I feel like everything is not private anymore and there is a way that you can market yourself, and I guess that would be a good component of a class would be a way to keep your private life private, but also market the things you want to market,” Gurley said.
Poe said the communication department is currently in discussions about creating a class specifically to teach students the in’s and out’s of using social media properly and effectively to market their skills, but that such a class would likely take several years to finalize.
Amanda Clay Powers, an associate professor in the Mitchell Memorial Library, holds classroom workshops to teach faculty, staff and students how to tailor their social media profiles to specific professional environments.
Powers said about 93 percent of recruiters look at social media information about people they intend to interview, which is why cleaning out Facebook, Twitter or Instagram profiles is important.
“That’s one of the things I really talk about is creating, if it’s appropriate for your discipline or your field that you want to go into, a professional twitter account so you can follow people in that field,” Powers said.
Powers said social media is more than a way to communicate with others; it is a way of being in the world by utilizing different tools to achieve different goals.
“We have students leveraging a lot of different tools for what they want to do, who they want to reach, and how they want to communicate,” Powers said.
Poe said the negative side of social media presents a psychosis because what is shared on these networking sites is an individuals’ best case scenario that does not necessarily depict real life.
Poe said there have been increases in bullying, suicides, depression and mental illness in the first generation to grow up with social media, however, there is no data to discern if these issues have actually increased or if professionals in those areas have merely gotten better at recognizing the symptoms.
“In some aspects, visual culture is all about being envious, being jealous of what you don’t have, what you could have, or what you think you could be, but I think social media has made it easier for the average person to project an image that’s not accurate,” Poe said.