Social Experiment At UCCS Aims To Get Students Focused

A social experiment at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs is banning social media on some computers in the school library.

Two social media-free zones have 22 computers in them. Students who use those computers are not allowed to get onto sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Digg.

There are more than 100 computers in the library, so staff members point out that it’s up to the students to decide which computers they want to work on.

Students told KRDO NewsChannel 13 they support the idea. They said it is often difficult to find a computer to use during testing weeks because the library is packed.

They said school resources should be used for academics, not social networking. If their peers want to browse sites like Facebook, students said they should use their personal computers.

Teri Switzer, dean of the Kraemer Family Library, said she thinks the experiment will get students thinking about how much time they spend on social media websites.

This experiment is part of a study being conducted by UCCS assistant professor Rory Lewis in the Computer Science Department.

Lewis is studying students’ addiction to social media. He plans to use data collected for neuroscience and library science papers.

Library staff are accepting student comments. They said they plan to take those comments into consideration when making a final decision at the end of the school year.

That’s when they’ll decide whether to expand this idea or do away with it altogether.