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This week, according to numerous media and technology executives, Facebook will unveil a media platform that will allow people to easily share their favorite music, television shows and movies, effectively making the basic profile page a primary entertainment hub.

" First: a questioning of existing principles such as impartiality - or, at least a demand for clarification of their meanings. Second: a stress on new values, such as transparency over objectivity; or, a preference for the unfiltered sharing of information over a filtered verification of "the facts." Responsible media practitioners remain committed to general principles, such as seeking the truth and reporting independently. But beyond this general level, the media revolution has undermined a previous professional consensus on the best forms of practice, and the norms that guide them. Our media revolution creates multiple and conflicting interpretations of journalism. Media ethics, like media, is in turmoil."

Each year on Constitution Day, students and teachers celebrate the most fundamental laws of our republic. On this Constitution Day, they should also celebrate Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and other social media. Why? Because it turns out that social media are good for the Constitution. Specifically, they're good for the First Amendment. Fully 91 percent of students who use social networking to get news and information daily believe people should be allowed to express unpopular opinions, compared with 77 percent of those who never use social networks to get news. Not all the news is good this year. While more students understand that government can't censor the media in this country, nearly 40 percent still don't. While more students say they think about the First Amendment, most still don't. Even so, when the numbers start to move in the right direction, it's cause for celebration. Do we have teachers to thank for recent improvements in First Amendment attitudes? Not really. Fewer students say they get First Amendment instruction in school than in our last survey. And only 30 percent of teachers say they are teaching the subject. I'm afraid many teachers are a drag on First Amendment learning. The survey says most don't support free expression rights in a school context. They don't think school papers should print controversial articles. They don't think students should post about school on Facebook. And they mostly think social media hurt teaching.

The blogosphere -- arguably the first engine of the new-media age -- is becoming more female, while traditional media is horning in on the blogging action, a new study said Friday.

This guide is designed to give teachers the tools and ideas they need to engage students using social media and existing curricula. The guide was inspired by the recent Knight Foundation study "Future of the First Amendment 2011" written by Dr. Kenneth Dautrich. The Knight study - based on a survey of 12,090 high school students and 900 high school teachers -- indicates that students who are most active in social media also have the best sense of First Amendment principles. That suggests that Twitter, Facebook and other social media can play an important supplemental role in the classroom.

"This year, for the first time, American high school students show a greater overall appreciation for the First Amendment than do adults. More students than ever before say they are thinking about the First Amendment. Nine in 10 say people should be able to express unpopular opinions. Six in 10 say the press should not be censored by the government. What happened? One explanation: the digital age. In 2011, Connecticut researcher Ken Dautrich found "a clear, positive relationship" between social media use and support for free expression. He now finds the same link between digital media use and First Amendment support."

The study -- "24 Hours: Unplugged" -- was conducted by the university's International Center for Media & the Public Agenda in late February and early March. Researchers found that American college students struggle to function without their media connection to the world.

Bodies hanging from bridge in Mexico are warning to social media users

While that debate rages on, here is a score in the social-media-may-be-harmful category. Using sites, such as Facebook and Myspace, makes teens more likely to drink, use illegal drugs and buy tobacco, according to a study from the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University.

"Even in New York, the media capital, only 1 in 8 public high schools have a student newspaper, The New York Times reported in May, and many publish only a few times a year. Nationally, about two-thirds of public high schools have newspapers, according to a 2011 media study by the Center for Scholastic Journalism at Kent State University. But whether on paper or online, student newspapers tend to be absent from lower-income schools and lower-income students. That's sad because, as Robert Fulghum titled his best-seller, "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten," I often feel as though I learned all I really needed to know about journalism in high school. Newspapers of all sorts have been battered for decades by television and widespread illiteracy. With the explosion of Internet traffic, too few youngsters are learning good news literacy. As Mrs. Kindell taught, you need to be a good reporter before you start giving your opinion. Today's world of blogging and tweeting encourages the opposite. Too bad we don't have more Mrs. Kindells to go around."

Blogs are so last decade. The preferred mode of communication, at least among young people, is social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, according to a survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. According to the report, only 14 percent of teen Internet users (12 to 17 year olds) in the United States today say they blog, compared to 28 percent in 2006."

Facebook. Twitter. MySpace. Cell phones. Blogs. Time thieves, all of them. Or at least that's how they've sometimes been portrayed in news media, common lore, and even the occasional scholarly study. Social media just add to the Great American Isolation, right? Not so, says a study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

"Even for a society comfortable with blood and gore in its movies and video games, the bombings at the Boston Marathon have sparked a new debate among news organizations about when images are too gruesome to display."

Trayvon Martin, an unarmed 17-year-old, was fatally shot on Feb. 26 in Sanford, Fla. The next day his death was a top story on the Fox-affiliated television station in Orlando, the closest big city to Sanford. Within a week it was being covered by newspapers around the state. But it took several weeks before the rest of the country found out. It was not until mid-March, after word spread on Facebook and Twitter, that the shooting of Trayvon by George Zimmerman, 26, was widely reported by the national news media, highlighting the complex ways that news does and does not travel in the Internet age.

Americans ages 12 to 34 are spending less time in front of TV sets, even as those 35 and older are spending more, according to research that will be released on Thursday by Nielsen, a company that tracks media use. The divide along a demographic line reveals the effect of Internet videos, social networks, mobile phones and video games - in short, all the alternatives to the television set that are taking up growing slices of the American attention span. Young people are still watching the same shows, but they are streaming them on computers and phones to a greater degree than their parents or grandparents do.

"Every public school district in New Jersey would be required to set guidelines on how its employees communicate with students online under legislation set for a vote in the state Senate today. The bill (S441) would require that the policy be written, and include "provisions designed to prevent improper communications between school employees and students made via e-mail, cellular phones, social networking websites, and other Internet-based social media." If it passes both houses and is signed by Gov. Chris Christie, school districts would have four months to adopt the policy."

The 25-year-old son of a Stafford councilman struck and killed a man with his car Wednesday morning, according to a report on APP.com. Robert Kusznikow was driving south on Mermaid Drive when his vehicle hit Michael Grosso, 76, of Barnegat at 10:22 a.m. Grosso died just before 11 a.m. at Southern Ocean Media Center in Manahwaki, the report said.

The U.S. Supreme Court began its October 2011 term this morning, kicking off what could be a major season for the student media. The SPLC is tracking five cases that will be addressed by the Court this term - even if it is just to refuse to hear the appeal. Any one of these cases could dramatically reshape the First Amendment climate for students. Before we preview those cases, however, it's worth brushing up on some High Court 101.

"SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - Ex-NBA star Dennis Rodman hung out with North Korea's Kim Jong Un during his improbable journey to Pyongyang, watching the Harlem Globetrotters with the leader and later drinking and dining on sushi with him. "You have a friend for life," Rodman told Kim before a crowd of thousands Thursday at a gymnasium where they sat side by side, chatting as they watched players from North Korea and the United States face off in mixed teams, Alex Detrick, a spokesman for the New York-based VICE media company, told The Associated Press. Rodman arrived in Pyongyang on Monday with three members of the professional Harlem Globetrotters basketball team, VICE correspondent Ryan Duffy and a production crew to shoot an episode on North Korea for a new weekly HBO series."