Abstract
Most college undergraduates are Millennials or Generation Z members. These generations are ferocious social media consumers across a range of platforms. Research exists on the U.S. military’s adoption of social media, but less is known about the everyday implications of social media use and how service members might differ in their uses from their civilian peers. Using survey data comparing (N = 960) American civilian college students, Reserve Officer Training Corps cadets, and military academy cadets, we examine how these groups use social media, the educational and social impacts of this usage, and experiences with self-censorship and anxiety. We find a civilian-military gap when it comes to social media uses and experiences. Social media is more adverse for civilians than academy cadets in terms of time usage, impact on education, and experiences with the darker dimensions such as cyber-bullying and harassment. Civilians also practice less self-censorship of social media posts than cadets.
Keywords
- Social media
- Time use
- Academic impact
- Cyberbullying
- Civil-military gap
Readers should be aware that the views of the authors are their own and do not purport to represent the views of their respective academies, the Departments of the Air Force and Army, the Department of Defense, or the United States Government.
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Notes
- 1.
Generations are typically a group of people born within the same time period. Scholars sometimes use the word “generation” to refer to a birth cohort. The following labels and birth years are typically associated generations in the United States: G.I. Generation (1901–1924); Silent Generation (1924–1945); Baby Boomers (1946–early 1960s); Generation X (early 1960s–1980); Millennials (1981–mid to late 1990s); and Generation Z (late 1990s–present) (See Ender et al. 2014).
- 2.
Our civilian samples are not restrictive – all eligible university students can complete the survey.
- 3.
The previous study is known as the Bi-Annual Attitude Survey of Students (BASS). The GENZ is a continuation of the previous study with new and updated questions – specifically, questions related to social media not asked on the BASS (Ender et al. 2014).
- 4.
Military academies are all-inclusive and exclusive university level boarding schools where all cadets live, work, and study together. In the United States they include the United States Military Academy at West Point, NY, the United States Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs, CO, the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD, and the United States Coast Guard Academy at New London, CT. The Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) is another source of officer accessions. Officer Candidate School (OCS) and direct commissioning are two further sources. They consist of university or college student-cadets that attend civilian universities across the United States, participate in military education and training on campus, but live and study with their civilian peers.
- 5.
The group Ns remain stable across each question with no more than 1–4 response differences based on missing values for each question.
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De Angelis, K.K., Kelty, R., Ender, M.G., Rohall, D.E., Matthews, M.D. (2020). Ubiquity with a Dark Side: Civil-Military Gaps in Social Media Usage. In: Moehlecke de Baseggio, E., Schneider, O., Szvircsev Tresch, T. (eds) Social Media and the Armed Forces. Advanced Sciences and Technologies for Security Applications. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47511-6_2
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