12 ABOUT CAMPUS / SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2010 Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). © 2010 by American College Personnel Association and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. DOI: 10.1002/abc.20030 F OR CENTURIES, issues of civil discourse only arose concerning written and oral communi- cation. But now, new technologies for com- munication and social interaction, particularly social media, have dramatically expanded the poten- tial for human interaction. They generate signiicant challenges for institutional policies and practices to encourage and sustain civil discourse for the critical social and personal issues we and our students face. To address this challenge, we review emerging trends in social media, discuss problems that arise with their use, and provide recommendations for helping students use social media in civil and productive ways. A BRIEF HISTORY OF SOCIAL MEDIA S OCIAL MEDIA are a collection of Web sites, ser- vices, and activities that engage users through col- laboration, sharing, and democratization of roles and responsibilities. They encompass a major shift in focus from the irst iteration of the Web because they allow for increased participation, connection, and interactiv- ity. Communication technologies have come a long way since e-mail was developed and popularized in the early 1970s. Yearly igures from Pew Internet and American Life Project’s surveys show that, at least since early 2000, just over 90 percent of Internet users used e-mail, with between 50 and 60 percent using e-mail daily. Online communication and socializing took a giant leap forward when Mark Zuckerberg invented Facebook for Harvard University students in late 2003. Since then, Facebook has amassed over 350 million active users, and multi- ple studies show that it is used by between 69 and 99 percent of college students. In 2003, Facebook marked the launch of a whole new category of communication technologies, referred to as “social networking” (and more recently called social media), that are used to stay in touch and interact with friends. As of this writing, Facebook’s own statistics show that its 400 million active users spend over 500 billion minutes interacting with Civil Discourse in the Age of Social Media By Reynol Junco and Arthur W. Chickering Love it or hate it, social media is here to stay. Reynol Junco and Arthur Chickering provide recommendations to help students use technology in ways that maximize their development and success.