The new generation of students is characterised by ad-hoc communication, multi-tasking, and collaborative work interspersed with collaborative play. Their "life world" is social, mobile, open, and defined by ubiquitous access to and use of information. In this environment every user can both appear as a content generator (posts and comments) and aggregator (searches, activity feeds, and tags) [Mandviwalla et al., 2013, p. 53], According to Ulbrich, Jahnke & Martensson [2011], members of the Net Generation use the web differently, they network differently, and they learn differently. When they start at university, traditional values on how to develop knowledge collide with their values. Many of the teaching techniques that have worked for decades do not work anymore because new students learn differently too. The Net Generation is used to networking; its members work collaboratively, they execute several tasks simultaneously, and they use the web to acquire knowledge [Ulbrich, Jahnke & Martensson, 2011 after Selwyn, 2012, p. 2], The aim of this article is to characterise social media in context of higher education, which will contribute to better understanding of social media phenomena and constitutes and introduction to further research. (fragment of text)