Photo by Rodion Kutsaev on Unsplash

This week in class we discussed the use of social media and all the benefits, frustrations, misunderstandings and pitfalls that come with it. Our guest speaker, who has over 15 years of experience working on and helping others with issues surrounding social media, gave us some advice about how best to use/not use social media both inside of and outside of the classroom.

“The difference between technology and slavery is that slaves are fully aware that they are not free.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

One of the main points the speaker talked about was how to properly assess risk when deciding to use social media and how private or public to make an account. A strategy that seems to be used by many is to have a professional account that can be shared with colleagues and other professional connections, and another that is strictly for personal uses. This cuts down on instances where underage students are following your personal posts which may, for example, show you enjoying an alcoholic beverage or engaging in behaviour that students–or perhaps more importantly, their parents–would be better off not seeing. I agree that it’s important to maintain a professional image in the classroom and not mix one’s private life with one’s personal life. Keeping students at a bit of a distance and not oversharing one’s personal life in the classroom feels to me a more appropriate approach to being an effective high school educator. Not only that but it allows you as a teacher to maintain a personal life on the weekends away from the stresses and responsibilities of school.

I personally don’t use social media much, particularly in the past few years. I used to be on Facebook and Instagram, but have since deleted those accounts, deciding to keep only my YouTube channel. I’ve never been even remotely interested in joining Twitter, and many of the “newer” social media apps, like Tik Tok and Snapchat, seem to offer very little in the way of value. While I recognize that many of the students I will be teaching will be very much into these apps–the same way I was consumed with video games and sports as a child–I definitely don’t feel any kind of fear of missing out.

There are certainly positive aspects to social media, some of which were covered by our guest speaker. He mentioned how teachers can use scheduled phone time in the classroom as a way to reward students for paying attention and not checking their phones while learning is taking place. The way I see it, this approach serves the dual purpose of teaching the kids about restraint while also limiting the number of “pick-ups” throughout their day.

Another positive aspect is that it allows the more timid kids, or the ones with social anxiety, to have a sort of comfort item to help them get through their day. Although my experience of high school was largely positive, not everyone’s experience in high school is or was something they enjoyed. Many people feel marginalized or out of place because of their sexual orientation, lack of popularity, socio-economic background or even the colour of their skin. Social media can provide these young people with a community of people just like them, something that didn’t exist for the outsiders of my day. Making it so that young people feel confident about themselves and helping them discover their identities is certainly an aspect to teaching that I am interested in learning more about and social media may be one of the ways to help reach the previously unreachable.

Our speaker also mentioned how the more ambitious young social media users can actually produce accounts that become quite lucrative, essentially calling into question some parents’ views that social media is just a waste of time. Some “influencers” are able to out-earn their parents before even graduating high school. While this is undoubtedly positive, I wonder what kind of jobs and futures there are in social media. It would be a shame for a young person to ignore their education in favour of making Tik Tok dances to then one day have that income dry up, leaving them with perhaps very little to offer to an employer. Having said that, it is anyone’s guess what the future of social media holds. It may end up being social media influencers who run the world one day (hey, stranger things have happened).

“It is okay to own a technology, what is not okay is to be owned by technology.”

Abhijit Naskar, Mucize Insan: When The World is Family

Despite some of these positive developments, I still see a lot of problems with social media, especially among youth who are not aware of some of the dangers and pitfalls associated with it. Our guest speaker talked about how the laws have been recently updated to reflect the amount of bullying and sharing of intimate photos that takes place online. It is illegal for someone to share a photo of you without your permission and there have been numerous cases where serious legal repercussions have occurred. Making sure young people understand that it’s not okay to distribute intimate photos of someone online seems particularly necessary this day in age.

There is also the addiction element, where students lack the control needed to limit their use of their smart phones and social media accounts. As someone who has two young children, education around using social media is something I’m interested in learning more about. Being proficient in social media and technology in general seems almost a requirement for young people these days, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a balance in there that allows them to engage in other interests offline. Of course, my childhood and my kids’ childhoods will not be the same, nor should I expect them to be, but having a balance of activities in one’s life is a good thing regardless of what generation one is born into, much the same way eating a balanced diet is important. Showing young people the power of the Internet and social media will no doubt provide them with useful and necessary tools for their future, but equally, so will showing them that a life outside of the Internet exists.

Overall, this week’s presentation gave a lot of food for thought regarding my own, my future students’, and my kids’ use of and involvement with social media and how that may have an impact on one’s personal and professional life. As mentioned, I am not a big social media user nor do I really hope to be, but staying informed about issues regarding its benefits and drawbacks is something I would like to stay up to date about in the rapidly changing landscape of technology and social media in the classroom.

Click the link to check out our guest speaker’s website, Mediated Reality, to learn more about issues regarding the safe and responsible use of social media.