text messages sent and the number of time spent talking on cell phone per week. Academic skills One of Junco's main research goals has been to determine whether and how the new media can be harnessed to obtain pedagogical benefits and to improve academic success of university students, and whether those benefits outnumber the potentially detrimental effects of multitasking and the extent to which social media could be distracting to learning. Junco and Mastrodicasa 2007, Junco, Heiberger and Loken 2010 and Junco and Cotten 2010 report current findings. Transferable skills Junco has studied the use of social media for improving students' Transferable skills (non-academic skills such as communication and self-expression, team-working and creation of professional networks, self-confidence, leadership, planning and time management, experience with different points of view, etc.). In Junco and Timm 2008, the authors showed that blogs can be successfully used for improving students’ writing and marketing skills. The Twitter users that Junco and his co-workers studied in Junco, Heiberger and Loken 2010 became more extroverted when encouraged to communicate through social media and were more likely to ask questions in class. They were also more likely to meet outside class and become friends in real life than students who did not use Twitter. Motivation Junco's research has shown that the new technologies can be used to increase student attainment and engagement with academic course work and to improve retention (Junco and Timm 2008, Junco, Heiberger and Loken 2010). Transitioning to college Junco has also investigated how social media can be used to improve the transitioning of first year students from high school to college (Junco 2005). Discussion Most of Junco's work sides with the generation of the "digital natives" and recommends to close the existing gap in the use of technologies by introducing the new modalities and media into teaching, establishing student affairs and course blogs, wikis and chat rooms, adopting more experiential teaching methods and restructuring work environments to include multitasking skills and teamwork. Although some opponents have asked for a more balanced perspective and questioned whether the use of new technologies actually entails a positive qualitative change in learning, Junco's recent research (Junco, Heiberger and Loken 2010, the first controlled study of its kind) has shown that the use of social media such as Twitter in college classroom settings can significantly improve student performance. Even when social media is initially used more for information sharing