I have a love-hate relationship with Social Media. This has been a long time on again off again relationship. I will begin to think that I understand how to use a Social Media platform and then there are changes and I am back to square one. I rarely use Social Media in my classroom as I teach early years and have not found a platform that I am comfortable using in the class. I use a variety of platforms on my own that then I take and incorporate pieces into my classroom. In my personal life I use Social Media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, WhatsApp, and I have Snapchat and TIKTOK but these are more so to have another means of keeping in touch with my oldest child and knowing what types of things he is watching and interacting with.
A negative experience I had with Social media involved me niece that is now 16 and when she first started using Social Media some of the things that she would post scared me. I was seeing the innocence of a child asking a question and the responses that were given that could be very detrimental to the self-confidence and mental health of a young child or anyone. I as an educator reached out wanting to bring this awareness to her parents and was met with hostility. I learnt to watch from the side lines and learn from what I was seeing so that I could be more aware with my own boys. I wanted to protect her from the outside world and how cruel it can be and I was unable to do this.
I have had great experiences with Social Media especially over COVID when it allowed me the opportunity to still talk and do video calls with my Mom and siblings that live in other communities across the country. Even though we were far apart it allowed us the opportunity to feel a bit of connection.
Professionally I appreciate Social Media platforms when they are laid out and explained on how to use them and integrate within my classroom. I do not like when I am given a platform to use and told play around with this and see what you like or don’t like. I do like that since COVID meetings can be done over different Social Media platforms which saves me driving time as I am 2.5 hours away from my Division office.
So, in the end I am still left wondering should I love or should I hate Social Media? I guess I could also decide to make the decision and to learn to just appreciate Social Media for what it is and to take the good the bad and know how to find a happy medium of what is just enough and what amount of Social Media is too much.
Hi Andrea! Great post that highlights the various pros and cons of social media. I totally forgot about WhatsApp in my list of personal social media platforms I use!
One app that I really loved using with my early years students was Seesaw – it was so easy, user friendly, and families enjoyed engaging on it! Unfortunately, my school division banned teachers from using it. We have since done a few different platforms – All About Me, a school messaging chat I can’t even remember the name of (that’s how long it lasted – haha!) and now Edsby.
A previous class I took from the Ed Tech suite of courses was all about Digital Citizenship and it spurred me to ask lots of questions about using the internet and devices – especially with/for young children. Ultimately, I ended up in the camp of supporting devices and internet for kids – IF it is used with appropriate adult supervision and scaffolding.
Kara, my division uses Edsby. I have a love hate relationship with this as sometimes things work and the next day they don’t or they have been changed. I put in a ton of work and families do not look at it. I think it is a platform that will take sometime for families to become comfortable with.
I have started using WhatsApp in variety of different settings.
Good luck this semester.
Hi Andrea, love having another HT colleague to take a class with!
Social media with teenagers is absolutely terrifying, I can relate in so many ways; both positive and negative but mostly negative. Which makes me hate social media, and wonder why there can’t be “nope you can’t send that” just automatically blocks content from being sent or received. Then there is the matter of how easily kids can connect with strangers from other cities, provinces, countries, and how kids view them as “true friends”, it boggles my mind, and also makes me worry about people with the wrong intentions pretending to be someone they are not or with other motives.
For me I have instagram but I am not as fluent with it as Facebook. Facebook houses so much for me, is easy to use, and is organized. Maybe if I put more time into learning instagram it could be better. Twitter just confuses me, and I really have a hard time seeing the point in it for me personally/professionally. I love SnapChat for me and being able to send silly pictures to people. However with the filters snapchat has it does make me very self conscious and I always feel I need to put a filter on any selfie I take; so that isn’t always awesome for the self confidence aspect.
Christine, I am with you with the Twitter. I am confused, and overwhelmed when I see it or even hear the word Twitter. I am glad to hear that I am not the only one.
Hi Andrea,
I appreciate your honest entry about social media. I feel the same way as you in terms of trying to protect and educate my child about the use of social media. I agree with you that it is hard to find an appropriate social media platform for Early Years students and to be quite honest sometimes I feel our young students have enough access at home. I think that happy balance goes in waves. I need to get better at this! It is so easy to sometimes get wrapped up in scrolling! I look forward to learning with you again in this course!
-Kendra
“I learnt to watch from the side lines and learn from what I was seeing so that I could be more aware with my own boys. I wanted to protect her from the outside world and how cruel it can be and I was unable to do this.” Thanks for sharing Andrea. I think this is such a difficult thing — navigating what you know and see, and figuring out how to share that information with relevant people, especially people that are perhaps not as willing to listen and learn. It’s such a difficult tension to manage, and it’s stressul!
Hi Andrea! Thank you for sharing your thoughts on social media and being vulnerable enough to share some of your own personal experiences with it. I am in complete agreeance, as I struggle with my own feelings on social media platforms. Like you pointed out, there are so many benefits and potential dangers of engaging. I appreciate you pointing out the pandemic as well, as without social media, it is hard to imagine what that collective experience would have been like without being able to connect through these different platforms.