As a Millennial with Social Media

There has been a lot of conversation surrounding social media as of late. With the USA government banning TikTok for 12 hours and many shifting over to RedNote, it has brought up many conversations surrounding social media’s role in our lives. It would be naïve to say that social media hasn’t impacted the way we interact and consume content. However, has this impact been positive or negative? That is an interesting conversation that has many opinions. If you were to ask parents, social media is dangerous and children should have limited access. However, parents love seeing their children and their projects on their daycare’s social media feed. If you were to ask teachers, they would say that students are distracted by social media and the addiction has been evident in class. On the other hand, teachers use social media to connect with other educators, share ideas, laugh at commonalities, and find new resources. If you were to ask administrators, they could say that it has allowed for them to create a community with the school’s population.

Now, if I were to bring this conversation a little closer to home and look at how social media has affected my life, personally and professionally, if would be a similar discombobulating conversation. So, lets break it down.

I was born in the 1980s. I grew up with the invention and implementation of the internet. I remember our first computer, the Encarta encyclopedia, the day dial up was connected in our house, I had (and still have) a Hotmail email, chatted on MSN Messenger, I joined both Friendster and Hi5. I was one of the first few people who activated a Gmail account when it was originally an invite only platform. As I moved to university, Facebook became the main social media platform. From here I kept up with most of the trends as best I could. I consumed massive amounts of social media.

So, in short, I am pretty well versed in the world of social media. But this doesn’t answer the question: Is it positive or negative? I think in short, we can see that my experience has been overall positive. If it wasn’t, why would I continue to use platforms that are adversely negative? However, I would not go as far to say it has been completely positive. I wish I lived in such a world. But, alas, that is not how the world works.

MSN Messenger

Lets begin from the start. This was honestly the social media platform that impacted me the most during my formative teenage years. I was not the best typer during our information processing class in high school (yes, I am that old). Honestly, I sucked. Even though I played organ, I could not get the home row keys down. My teachers used to keep me in during recess to get better. However, as I used MSN messenger more and more, my typing skills improved drastically. I even got to the point where I didn’t need to look at the keyboard anymore. It was a big moment for me.  Now, being on dial-up for all of these experiences was not the most positive experience for my parents. Looking back, I am thankful they were as liberal with my online screen time as they were.

Facebook/Instagram/Twitter

As Facebook was launched in Canada, I was signed up within the first year. It was a great way to keep up with friends and post about your life. However, it eventually lead to the political posting, echo chambers began to form, and social media etiquette changed. Slowly and surely, I found that Facebook was mainly memes, inspirational quotes and political allegiance posts. Then, as you shifted from the academic world to the professional world, it was essential that you locked down your profile and either delete or hide anything that an employer would find unsavory. There was a sense that you could no longer be honest online, but had to censor yourself and your life. As if your professional persona was no longer enough. Your private life was subject to criticism and judgement. As a teacher, it is not only your division administration that is looking at your social media presence, it is also your students and the students’ parents. This has lead me to change my name on my profile, turn on every privacy setting, and stop posting as much. Has this provided me “security”? Not as much as you think. While my students struggle with some basic google searching skills, they are able to find the smallest scrap of information on you on social media faster than CSIS. For example. My user name on Instagram is “SDF”. My photo does not include my face. Yet, my students have found me every year, without fail. It is a sobering reminder that there is no privacy online, and you need to be aware of this every time you hit “post”.

While Twitter (I refuse to call it the new name) followed the same trajectory as Facebook, it did splinter off and became essential for my job as a classroom teacher who was a connected educator. We had to connect with colleagues regarding professional development, classroom activities, professionals we wanted to touch base with, and providing a visual learning journey for other colleagues to engage with. However, this has since become more defunct as my career has progressed. Partially because the connected educator program has become less of a focus, and partially because we are quite aware of the platform Twitter has become.

Snapchat

As much as I love this app, I can see a lot of the negative aspects of it. As an educator, I have seen my students use this app as a way to isolate and exclude students just as much as they use it to be inclusive to classmates. I have seen classes where everyone is welcome in the group chat, and it creates a community for the students. I have also seen it used to destroy student’s well being and mental health because they have been left out. As someone who uses the app in my personal life, it has helped with being able to navigate the complexities of what can and can’t be done with the app, how students use it, and things to be aware of. On a personal level, this app is the only way I communicate with some of my friends. I can text them for days on end with no response. However, I will Snap them once, and they respond immediately. While it is a mild annoyance, it is interesting how we each interact with each other online and the preferences we have. Some of my friends send me messages from 3-4 platforms, and others staunchly use only one. It is interesting.

Reddit

I had never heard of this platform until I met my husband. It is now one of the most used apps on my phone. Not only do I use it for entertainment, but I also use it for local, provincial, national and international news. While I find this platform extremely useful, there are some very important considerations to take into account while using it. Reddit is basically a forum board. Everything needs to be considered through a critical lens. With the increase in foreign interference in the political sphere, there has been a substantial increase in bot activity and echo chambers being formed. This has caused a lot of extremist beliefs to be easily shared or passed off as “reasonable”.  While Reddit has moderators in place for most subRedditts, they are merely people trying to fight back the tide with a canoe paddle: they can only do so much.

TikTok

As much as I hate to admit it, I use TikTok quite a bit. Originally, I downloaded it so I could keep up with the jargon my students were beginning to use, the memes they were referencing, and the jokes being shared. I needed to know if what they were saying was appropriate. This lead me to following other educators, content creators that interest me, and finding quick resource videos for class. I have found that “doom scrolling” is an easy thing to do, as your FYP (For You Page) changes as you like and spend time on videos. I have had to reset the algorithm for my FYP several times due to the videos that start showing up. Sometimes I catch this negative trend quickly, and sometimes I don’t. I find when I don’t catch it quickly, I tend to become affected by the content I am consuming. It is something everyone needs to be cognizant of when they are  using any social media platform.

 

So, what is the takeaway? While social media has opened up the world to us in so many positive ways, there are a number of negative aspects that we must be aware of personally and professionally. If we are to responsibly teach our students about digital citizenship, we need to have a robust understanding of social media and its impacts. This includes critical analysis of its use, message, and influence.