Social Media in Education

 Social Media in Education

        Within social media in education, I picked the category of teenagers. As a secondary education teacher, I see the impact of social media on teenagers lives everyday. I read the articles, ‘Facebook is at the point of no return’: These 17-year-olds are very clear about what they love and hate about social media and What is a ‘Finsta?’ Teens and their secret Instagram accounts. In these two articles, they talk about the different popular social media platforms and the different things teenagers have to say about them. Teenagers today, fall into the Gen Z generation. This generation is OBSESSED with social media and have never lived in a world without it. With that said, their lives are highly influenced by these social media apps. 

    In the first article, discussing what teenagers love and hate about social media, I was not surprised by the things I read. With being close in age to this generation, I had to say I agree with a lot of what the article reported about what teenagers were saying. For example, they found that the most popular platforms were Instagram and Snapchat. They mentioned how most teenagers have Facebook, but do not actually use it. A lot of teenagers accused Facebook of "copying" its new look from Instagram and I am guilty of saying this same thing in the past. Facebook now has stories or highlights, which we first saw on Snapchat and Instagram. Because of how hot of a topic social media can be, I would love to take surveys pertaining to this topic at my school. I can have my classes create the survey and create their graphs and projects on their data findings. I think this would be a lot of fun and a great way to engage the students because this for sure would be something that would grab their attention. 

    Furthermore, the second article, that I loved reading, talked about "finsta." In case you are not familiar, a "finsta" is a "fake Instagram." This article discussed teenagers who have a finsta and what it is used for. I was laughing reading this because I am a 26 year old who has a finsta as well. I was shocked to see they had an article on finsta because I did not realize it was so popular. My finsta I created back when I was in undergrad with my college roommate. We used it to "creep" others social media and post goofy pictures. The article brought up an alarming topic of cyberbullying used through finsta. As most of us know, teenagers can be mean (I have apologized to my mom many times about my teenage years). When teens they have a "hidden identity" through finsta, this can cause a lot of cyberbullying issues. Because of this, it is important to have these talks with students about the harmful actions social media can cause. The more we can educate them about social media, the more we can enlighten them to use social media for the good. All of these apps have so many positive aspects about them, it is crucial we do not let the negative parts ruin them. Words put on social media can hurt and no one should have to deal with that.

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