The Short Take: State of the Union and the state of discourse.

Originally published in the January 29th edition of The Torch, Valparaiso University's student newspaper.

Like a responsible newsman, I watched President Obama’s State of the Union address last Wednesday; like a responsible college student, I watched it streaming live on YouTube while tweeting and debating with a friend about the substance of Obama’s speech via Facebook. This is all happening, of course, in multiple tabs of Google Chrome, shifting between these sites with the dexterity of an Italian cab driver.

The speed with which our technology is evolving and the ability of the masses to harness it, is truly astounding. YouTube had more than four million live viewers of the State of the Union. Twitter threads bearing the hash tag “SOTU” received nearly 300 tweets per minute during the address and Facebook’s live feed was rife with Obama-talk. Social media brought about massive public discourse on a scale that no town meeting, no newspaper column could match.

Considering the demographics of social media users, we are given even more reason for encouragement. Nearly half of all Twitter users are between the ages of 18 and 35 years of age. It’s clear that social media is catalyzing political socialization among young people. All this technology and all this software must be tended to properly and immediately. It will be must easier to groom and nurture this infant of social media as it grows. For when it hits its adolescence, we must be prepared for more turbulent times, ones that may put today’s media to shame.