Aroosa Ajani uses social media to connect with her Girl Scouts group and to bring distant family members together on special occasions. Sumain Hemani

A self-proclaimed “regular teenager,” Aroosa Ajani spends her time outside of school as a Girl Scout helping special needs children, and chatting with friends on Facebook – something she considers commonplace. When the 16-year-old was asked to help prepare for her cousin's wedding, her use of this technology was far from inconsequential: it allowed the father of the bride to be part of the festivities.

Due to travel restrictions from Pakistan, he and two of his children were unable to attend his daughter's wedding in Houston. But Ajani, a digital native, refused to let that stand in the way of the happy occasion. By using technologies such as Skype and Facebook, she was able to provide more than just live updates of the wedding ceremonies to the bride's family; she made sure it was a special day for everyone involved.

“Because I use Facebook so often, I found it really easy to connect my family,” she says. “At the same time, I was thinking how amazing it was that we were uploading pictures and all my relatives were together in the same digital place, even if we weren't physically together.”

New space, new tools

Ajani's experience speaks to the developing role of social media in today's world: a new space in which people can connect instantaneously across geographies. Having reached an estimated billion social media users by the end of 2011, that is no small feat.

And social media “is here to stay”, according to Naila Jinnah. A Master's student at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Jinnah has found her interest in social media research in studying the use of Twitter by National Hockey League athletes, and the impact it has in their self-branding on fans and others. “It's like the old village campfire or town hall meeting, except virtual,” she says.

Ajani, who recently started using Twitter, agrees that the platform is useful for staying current with the public conversation. “I use Twitter much more for accessing information and news, and I also subscribe to TED Talks and news sources,” Ajani explains, differentiating her use of Twitter from the more social use of Facebook, which allows her to remain in touch with friends and family despite not seeing them for years. She sees this as a significant improvement on earlier technologies, including email.

“I've had email for a longer time, but I never used it like this,” she explains. “With Facebook I can see what is going on in my friends' lives and they can see what's going on in mine, without needing to actively tell them every detail.”

But perhaps it is more than a simple town hall meeting. With the potential to reach millions of people instantly (US President Barack Obama's tweets are received by over 25 million people worldwide within seconds), social media has enabled a level of connectivity that is unprecedented in human history.

Lurking dangers

Define the Line, a website launched by Shaheen Shariff, teaches people of all ages how to stay safe online and to prevent cyber-bullying. Copyright: Define the Line

Shaheen Shariff, a tenured professor at McGill University and an Affiliate Scholar at the Center of Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, suggests that the way we interact with each other through social media can become dangerous. Part of the problem is that being online gives many people a false sense of anonymity.

Professor Shariff has spent her recent career studying means of limiting cyber-bullying, or “the extension of schoolyard bullying through social media.” Responding to a growing need for digital citizenship education, she recently launched the Define the Line website (www.definetheline.ca), a site geared towards providing policymakers, parents, and internet users of all ages with the tools to identify and respond to cyber-bullying.

Shariff suggests that we prepare our youth for strong citizenship in the digital realm. Her website offers important advice and activities to develop healthy online behaviours.

Despite the dangers of the internet, Shariff does not believe that children should be kept offline. “Censorship and filters never work,” she states. “In fact they bring more attention to the content you're trying to filter.”

A burgeoning field

The rise of social media has led quickly to a growing field of research and entrepreneurship. Ali Solehdin, a pioneer in social media, says the growth of online networking is a major factor in advancing his career. A Product Manager at Sophos, he sees this digital town hall as an important tool for companies and organisations to engage more meaningfully with customers.

“The web has really transitioned from being just a source of information to a platform for participating in two-way dialogue,” Solehdin explains. “The social network really drives user engagement.”

Ajani agrees. “Social media is interesting for understanding human behaviour,” she says. “People use it for things that they may not normally do face-to-face. I don't try to come off as someone else online, but I consider my words much more carefully when I'm online, because it feels like they will be there forever.”

As young people in today's world, many consider Jinnah and Ajani's use of social media to be an important aspect of their education. Educators and policymakers realise the need to prepare today's students with 21st century skills, and many see the ability to work, learn, and communicate through social media as a key ingredient to operating in today's world, and the world of the future.

Ajani has already started to prepare herself for the future by using these tools for more than social communication; she collaborates on homework assignments and coordinates her Girl Scouts group through social media. She is amazed at how quickly these technologies have evolved in their use and design.

“It will be great to see how these sites change in the future,” she says.

How to be safer online

Ali Solehdin discusses his views on prevailing trends and the need for safety online. Courtesy of Ali Solehdin

“An increase in user participation in social media sites carries with it a greater risk of abuse,” warns Ali Solehdin, Product Manager at Sophos, a developer of online security software. Solehdin shares the following tips for staying safer online:

1. Choose strong passwords and use different passwords across different sites to limit your exposure.
2. Never click on links just because you know the sender. Malware hosted on compromised sites will infect your computer immediately.
3. Be alert to users that you do not know who try to connect with you by sending invitations. If you don't know the sender, ignore the request.
4. Always review default privacy settings and avoid providing personal information whenever possible. Review your settings regularly and turn off that that unnecessarily make your information publicly available
5. Assume that everyone can read whatever you write in perpetuity. Information posted on social networking sites is potentially stored forever – even if you delete your account.
6. Some social media platforms like Facebook provide the option of having your public profile searchable on search engines like Google. Disable this option. If it is enabled, then your personal information is indexed by search engines, at which point you lose control over that information and over how long it can be seen.
7. Be careful when allowing your profile to be viewed by anyone on Facebook. Opening your profile to be seen and viewed by absolutely anyone puts your personal information at risk of exploitation.
8. Ensure that Facebook's “instant personalization” option is disabled. This is an opt-in option that allows Facebook partner websites to access your Facebook information and enable greater customisation and sharing options; but it puts your personal information at greater risk.
9. Only allow your friends to see your Facebook “friends list”. Knowing who your friends are is a big help to identity thieves, so set your friend list visibility to be only viewed by yourself.
10. Finally, ensure that your computers and mobile devices always have the latest updates and security patches, and that you are running an up-to-date anti-virus scanner and personal firewall.