Social Media vs. Our Teens

Image source: Rawpixel.com

 

When you download a new app onto your device, do you take the time to read the user agreement? As a sixth-grade teacher I begin the school year with internet safety and digital citizenship lessons. I wrote in a previous post about the difference between digital visitors and residents. While my sixth graders have grown up with technology being a daily part of their existence, I often find they are clueless as to how to use it safely and responsibly. 

What social media platforms do you use?

For many students, Snap is a preferred platform for social engagement. One of the huge appeals of this platform is their belief that their messages "disappear". My students are always blown away when we take the time to read Snap's user agreement. In any given year nearly half of my students are using Snap, despite the fact they are 11 or 12 years old. According to Snap's terms of use you must be 13 to use the service, and if you are under 18 you need your parents' consent to use it. 

For nearly all of the students I teach, the appeal of Snap is that the messages "disappear". They believe that whatever they send is impermanent. Let's look at paragraph 2 of Section 3:

"For all content you submit to the Services, you grant Snap and our affiliates a worldwide, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable license to host, store, cache, use, display, reproduce, modify, adapt, edit, publish, analyze, transmit, and distribute that content."

We spend time in a critical read of this paragraph. We discuss the meaning of "all content". There is always a lightbulb moment when the students realize that a company has the right to store all of their data and messages. If a message "disappears", how can it be stored? My students finally start to understand the truth about the internet, nothing really disappears. 

Image source: Rawpixel.com


How else can we understand teen internet use today?

In April 2023 Emily Vogels and Risa Gelles-Watnick published a fascinating piece title "Teens and Social Media: Key Findings from Pew Research Center Surveys". Of the major social media platforms, I was surprised to discover YouTube was the site most used by teens (95%) and 19% report using it "almost constantly". This has enormous ramifications for teachers. Students are in school approximately six hours a day, how are they using any app constantly? The dark truth is they are using their mobile devices surreptitiously when they should be focused on their studies. I think I found this surprising because YouTube doesn't occupy the fabric of national discourse the same way Tik-Tok does. 

Teenagers are not a monolith.

I found more statistics surprising when reading the Pew study. There seems to be a large gender disparity in social media usage, as well as differences among various ethnic groups. 81% of Black teens are Tik-Tok users, compared with 62% of White teens. Pew also found that teen girls are more likely to use Tik-Tok, Instagram, and Snapchat, while teen boys are more likely to use YouTube, Twitch, and Reddit. 

Pew also asked teenagers how they feel social media has impacted them and others. I found this statistic surprising. While 32% of teens believed social media had a negative impact on others, only 9% believed it had a negative impact on themselves. I hope to see Pew do a deep dive into these numbers.

The bottom line.

Many of our teenagers are using social media, with consequences that we all have to reckon with. I would encourage you to check out the Center for Humane Technology. The director, Tristan Harris, has been ringing the warning bells about social media usage for several years now. They publish a podcast and are responsible for the Netflix special "The Social Dilemma". 


Vogels, E. A., & Gelles-Watnick, R. (2023, April 24). Teens and social media: Key findings from Pew Research Center surveys. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/24/teens-and-social-media-key-findings-from-pew-research-center-surveys/

Comments

  1. Diba TannaziJune 7, 2023 at 3:21 PM

    That's interesting that more teens find social media to have a negative impact on others rather than themselves. I don't find that surprising because I too complain about how much people use their smart phones and go on social media, but I also am very reliant on it as well. I wonder what the statistics are for adults. I think it would be similar in the sense that more adults would think social media has a negative impact on others compared to their own selves.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anthony Sendzimer.June 8, 2023 at 7:07 AM

    Howdy, Jason! Really great piece here; love the organization, love the content. I appreciate that you go over the Snapchat user agreement policy with your students. It was kind of a joke (or even sometimes just interesting/helpful) years ago that nobody reads the iTunes policy. And when there's just walls and walls of text in legalese that don't say anything particularly interesting, I wouldn't blame a 6th-grader or a 60-year old for not wanting to read all that. I certainly don't. However, I like that you clipped a section that would be relevant to them and presented it as something that affects their daily social lives. Thank you for this piece! I feel like I'm going to return to it in the future.

    ReplyDelete
  3. NMZumpanoJune 9, 2023 at 12:51 PM

    THANK YOU for teaching your students to read the Terms of Service agreements, Jason. Even if they don't read them every time, they should always be aware of that these agreements exist. A true case of "knowledge is power."

    ReplyDelete
  4. Courtney AnneJune 10, 2023 at 11:48 AM

    Hi Jason, I love your lesson on digital citizenship to read the terms and conditions. It is so important, especially for tweens and teens to understand what they are signing up for and why! I recently had 5th graders come to my first grade classroom to have "my whole class" sign a petition extending the after school program to the last day of school. I told the girls their idea was great and they can gladly come in to talk about it but I will tell my students they do not have to sign it if they do not want to. They were taken aback and asked why I would tell my class they don't have to sign. I explained there are terms and conditions to everything we do and signing your name could sign their lives away if they don't fully understand why they are signing. I hope that conversation was able to give a tidbit of thought for them. Keep up the great work!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Post #2: Self-Evaluation of SAMR Model

Image
How often do you stop to reflect on your teaching practice? This week I've had to think about my technology integration in the classroom. There a number of models that teachers can use to evaluate themselves with regards to technology use in the classroom. After exploring three of these models, I find the SAMR model to be best for me to evaluate myself as an educator. The SAMR model is an acronym that stands for Substitution, Augmentation, Modification and Redefinition and was created by educational researcher Ruben Puentedura in 2010 (Terada, 2020). This model is perfect for me as it is very easy to understand and to compare my teaching practice. It's important to focus not on what SAMR is, but instead on what it does. Walsh & Walsh (2015) states that "The SAMR model provides a technique for moving through degrees of technology adoption to find more meaningful uses of technology in teaching and move away from simply using edtech for tech's sake" ( 8 Examples ...
Read more

If a picture is worth 1,000 words, a Tweet is worth....

Image
Do you love social media? Do you hate it? No matter how you feel about it, social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are powerful tools that can bring disparate groups of people together. I have been a Twitter user for nearly a decade and one useful aspect of that platform is knowing what people are thinking. Since 2016 this has proven to be a double edged sword, and Twitter has become even more problematic under it's new ownership. Despite all of those downsides, Twitter is still a powerful platform for education professionals to exchange ideas. Whom do I follow? I follow many educational experts and organizations, but one that I find especially helpful is Edutopia. Edutopia was founded back in 1991 by the George Lucas Educational Foundation . The mission of Edutopia is to integrate emerging technologies with educational strategies.  As a long-time follower of Edutopia on Twitter I have read useful articles that have transformed my teaching practice. What resource has Edutopia ...
Read more

Trends in Ed Tech: SEL

Image
Have you stopped to think about the current trends in educational technology, and how those trends fit into your classroom? In 2021 Diana Fingal wrote about the "Hottest Topics in EdTech in 2021". In this article she describes 9 trends that are taking over the digital classroom. These trends cover topics from Digital Citizenship to Creativity. This post will explore one of the digital technology trends, and offer a tool that educators can use to help their students. What is SEL? SEL stands for Social and Emotional Learning and is one of the hottest trends in education. SEL is often paired with cultural competence. Fingal (2021) describes this trend as helping students cope with trauma and anxiety. The past few years have taken a tremendous toll on many of us. Many have gotten sick and lost loved ones due to COVID or related complications. Studies have shown that students can be explicitly taught to process emotions and build resilience.  Valenzuela (2021) describes one of th...
Read more