As a teacher, even though I am all for the use of technology for educational purposes, there is a combination of realities I have faced that I take into consideration as my view of social media evolves. First, I do not have a personal account on the most popular applications. Second, as an elementary school teacher, I have to be able to communicate with my students’ parents, but I do not provide parents with my personal phone number. However, it is neither possible nor effective to use the school phone every time I need to communicate something.
Furthermore, it is clear that many people prefer to receive information in digital writing forms that they can easily access from their devices often. Due to the number of parents who use social media to stay informed on what is happening with their students’ school and district, online platforms like Facebook continue to play an important role in reaching the masses. Lawrence (2022) stated that “Facebook continues to be the leading social media platform at the time of writing this book, with billions of active monthly global users” (p. 47). For example, I found several schools in my area that shared flyers about summer camps being offered at their schools. With all the parents looking for summer options for their kids, I consider these posts to be a great use of social media. Thanks to Facebook, this local school could share the summer camp flyers offering information both in English and Spanish. Also, those who view the post can ask questions, comment, and reshare it.
Not only can individual schools use their social media to keep families informed of all things school-related, but school districts’ central offices do this as well. I visited the Facebook profile of one of the biggest school districts in Alabama, our state. I chose to take this screenshot because besides using social media to share an event, this post is related to their technology department’s commitment to improving technology integration in their schools. This lets everyone in the district (employees, parents and students) know the importance of technology.
Undoubtedly, it is great to see teachers, schools, and districts use their social media to connect with families in educational ways. However, based on conversations with my students and conversations I hear amongst them, they spend a great deal of time on social media for non-educational purposes. Oftentimes, students are not even aware of what their school or district has posted on social media because they primarily use it for reasons that have nothing to do with school. That is a topic I will focus more on for the remainder of this blog because I see the negative effects social media has on our students as highly concerning. While here I will place a greater emphasis on secondary students because I think they are the ones spending more time on social media, I found this podcast about how social media can impact the quality of teaching and learning in primary classrooms as well.
Regarding how often secondary students use the internet and social media, there is a study I found that has become interesting to me. Specifically, this study agreed that “internet usage has beneficial and harmful aspects, and this situation may have positive and negative consequences. Internet use may also affect the quality of life of high school students” (Duzenli et al., 2023, p. 616). When working with secondary students and noticing their view of social media, I have not seen a desire in them to stay updated about summer camps or their district’s technology innovations. Unfortunately, what I have seen more of is students constantly seeking validation with every comment and post they share, most of which are not related to school. Not to mention the amount of time they spend in front of their devices. To reiterate, Duzenli et al. (2023) affirmed that “it can be said that the Internet addiction levels of individuals using social media are increasing” (p. 615). To clarify, all the efforts of schools and districts are necessary and beneficial. Nonetheless, something must be done to support students in becoming more interested in using social media for educational purposes. I found this short video with tips about how social media can be used this way!
From my standpoint, social media has many positive aspects, and the screenshots I shared for this blog are examples of it. Nevertheless, I think we need to have more discussions about setting boundaries with social media use. On one hand, we need to encourage our students to engage more with the platforms where their teachers, schools and districts are keeping them updated on important information. On the other hand, we need to create more awareness and ways to support students in significantly reducing the amount of time they spend on social media. Lawrence (2022) argued that “questions about whether the world would be better off without social media are useful for classroom discussions. And they may help lead us to better regulate these platforms and prevent more harm from being done” (p. 50). Actually, I found this amazing high school student’s video that I would like to use to start this discussion with other students.
The truth is, there is not much I can add after hearing what the student from the previous video said. I will close by highlighting that “we must figure out a way to contend with social media, to be more ethical users of social media, to educate our legislators about its effects and how it works…” (Lawrence, 2022, p. 50). We must create awareness on how to use social media instead of letting social media use us. We must create awareness amongst families, school personnel, and legislators in this process. As with many things in life, we cannot improve this on our own and we need to work together as a team, because social media is here to stay.
References
Duzenli, O., Ugur-Erdogmus, F., Korkmaz, O., & Cakir, R. (2023). An investigation of high school students' social media use, internet addiction and self-confidence levels. International Journal of Technology in Education (IJTE), 6(4), 593-619. https://doi.org/10.46328/ijte.521
Lawrence, D. (2022). Digital writing: A guide to writing for social media and the web. Ontario, Canada: Broadview Press.
Gia,
ReplyDeleteI completely agree. I, too, deactivated most of my social media accounts after discovering that my time was spent scrolling mindlessly and it was influencing my competitive nature. I agree, though, that social media can be a good tool in the classroom. Lawrence (2022) stated, "...there have certainly been cases where Facebook has provided some positive benefit to the world that we cannot deny." (p. 48). Yes, social media can be a scary place, but no matter our thoughts on the matter, our students are definitely influenced by social media daily. As teachers we need to harness this interest and availability of social media to engage more learners and help them learn to use them effectively and safely. Brown (2023) state, "At this pivotal time when young adults are entering a society of information overload, educators can equip students with the skills to critically examine scientific claims made in social media." (p. 1). Teachers can use the expansion of social media to teach students how to use social media safely, how to identify misinformation, and how to critically examine what the author of a social media post is trying to convey.
References
Brown, J. (2023). Social media reflection assignment: A simple classroom intervention to help students examine scientific claims in social media. Journal of Microbiology and Biology Education 24(1). 1-3. doi: 10.1128/jmbe.00155-22
Lawrence, D. (2022). Digital writing: A guide to writing for social media and the web. Broadview Press.
Gia,
ReplyDeleteI share a lot of the same thoughts about social media. Especially with how it has taken over the lives of students as young as third grade. I remember growing up and begging my parents for a cellphone to be able to text my friends and now some of the students that come through my elementary school have the latest iPhone and know how to you use it way better than I could ever dream of. Your blog actually got me interested to find out what kind of studies have been done on the effects of social media on students and I found some interesting things. For example, "social media breeds a form of anxiety among young people called the “fear of missing out” (Barry & Wong, 2020; Brown & Kuss, 2020; Hayran et al., 2020; Sela et al., 2019). This anxiety of missing out keeps young people constantly checking their phones to make sure they are not missing out on any amusement or funfair activities going on. Besides that, social media always showcases the best or the exaggerated part of everyone else’s life and continuously seeing this can create needless comparisons among
young people. Comparing oneself unnecessarily to other people is a sure path to anxiety, and social media has only made it easier (Karim et al., 2020; Ra et al., 2018; Twenge & Campbell, 2019)" (Nurudeen et al., 2022). This article brought up many things that effect not only our students but also us at some point. Thanks for sharing!
References:
Nurudeen, M., Abdul-Samad, S., Owusu-Oware, E., Koi-Akrofi, G. Y., & Tanye, H. A. (2022). Measuring the effect of social media on student academic performance using a social media influence factor model. Education and Information Technologies, 28(1), 1165–1188. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-022-11196-0
Gia,
ReplyDeleteYou’re so right about needing to set boundaries with social media use. As I wrote in my blog post, a lot of that comes down to us as teachers because of the lack of parental guidance at home sometimes. And I’m not blaming those parents–I think parents are also unaware of the negative impact that social media can have. As Lawrence (2022) stated, “we cannot know at this point in time whether social media has had a net positive or negative ‘benefit’ to humanity,” (section 2.8) which is why we need to make sure those conversations are had. James and Weinstein (2021) did a lot of research on this topic and provided insight and protocol for encouraging students to think about their digital voice. I really like how their work emphasizes the importance of students’ own voice when using technology.
-M. E. Sammis
References
James, C., & Weinstein, E. (2021). Children as digital citizens: Insights from classroom research with digital dilemmas. Journal of E-Learning and Knowledge Society (17)3, 5-7. https://doi.org/10.20368/1971-8829/1135583
Lawrence, D. (2022). Digital writing: A guide to writing for social media and the web. Broadview Press.