While preparing for a presentation I'll be giving in October I came upon this paragraph:
"Printing was considered vulgar and only for the poor. Many aristocratic bibliophiles refused to disgrace their collections with the presence of a non-manuscript text. It fell to the lower classes to recognize the importance of the printing press. And they did - by the end of the fifteenth century, more than one thousand printers had printed between eight and ten million copies of more than forty thousand book titles.

Full text here.

Let's do a little word substitution and see if it still holds true:
Social Media (or cell phones, or Web tools, etc) was considered inappropriate and only for the students. Many school districts refused to disgrace their classrooms with the presence of such a tool. It fell to the students to recognize the importance of the tools. And they did - by the end of 2009, more than 23 million users had accounts on Facebook, alone."

Interesting, no?

Oh, by the way, if you've got the Google/Wolfram alpha plugin for Firefox, do a search for "number of active facebook users 2009" See if you think the results may be a little off. :-)