No evidence says Neil Selwyn.

At Ed-Media 2010 Neil spoke against the following motion:

Be it Resolved that this House Believes that the Use of Social Media and Networking is Contributing to the Attainment of Significant Educational Goals in Ways that Suggest Even More Powerful Future Impact

Written version of presentation: http://www.scribd.com/doc/33693537/The-educational-significance-of-social-media-a-critical-perspective

Some quotes from the paper:

it is astonishing how much of the recent debate around social media and education appears to be driven by belief, speculation, anecdote and personal experience rather than recourse to actual evidence

the majority of social media use involves little more than checking in on Facebook (or its local equivalent) and looking things up on Wikipedia. The vast majority of internet users have never heard ofFour Square,Tumblr,Gowalla and their ilk

the majority of people who do use social media are perhaps best termed as ‘non-active users’

One of the obvious limitations to current enthusiasms for social media is the self-contained, self- referencing and self-defining nature of the debate. These are generally conversations that only ever take place between groups of social media-using educators – usually using social media to talk about the educational benefits of social media