Social Media Literacy: Why Should We Teach It?

 In class, Jeff pointed out that the topic of social media was largely avoided in schools for many years, and he suggested that we are now facing consequences for such avoidance. I agree with his claim, and I believe that educators have a responsibility to talk about social media use with our students just as we are often deemed responsible for other areas of their moral development. As an ELA and Social Studies teacher, I also feel responsible for instilling something called social media literacy in my students. 

Social Media Literacy is an emerging concept that springs from media literacy and is increasingly important as more people are reported to use social media, more companies, organizations, and politicians and political groups market themselves on social media, and more misinformation is spread on social media. Due to mass use, social media has transformed how we relate to each other, and while there are benefits to it such as the ability to remain connected to our friends and family who we are unable to see frequently, there are also consequences as users are subject to publicity, images with positivity bias, and aggressive and violent behavior among other things. 

Definition

Social media literacy refers to one’s ability to critically evaluate various social media platforms with knowledge of the platform-specific culture, how to use the platform to consume and create content, and how the algorithm for each platform functions. Beyond understanding the various social media platforms, social media literacy also refers to one’s awareness of the messages and advertisements that are pushed on such platforms as well as one’s ability to differentiate “reality” from the constructed reality presented through the content one consumes on social media. 

Competencies

To be social media literate, there are certain competencies that one must possess, including analysis, evaluation, synthesis, and interpretation of information as well as the ability to assess the motive, purpose, realism, and credibility of a publication. In simpler terms, critical thinking, analytical skills, and media literacy are paramount to developing social media literacy. Additionally, one must be able to actually operate social media accounts, meaning they can create, review, organize, and share content, use privacy settings, and publish photos, images, videos, or memes. 

Why Teach Social Media Literacy?

I have previously written about teaching students to be successful world citizens and therefore successful digital citizens, and I see social media literacy as integral to that mission. Similar to the ideas Damaris explores in her post, “Technology and Bullying in Elementary Schools,” I believe that students must be taught how to conduct themselves respectfully and safely online, particularly on social media, where cyberbullying abounds and digital footprints can haunt children forever. Recent research indicates that many students’ parents lack sufficient understanding to teach their children how to act responsibly when using social media, making it our responsibility to do so in school. The fast pace and immediacy of social media make it difficult for students to understand its permanence, particularly when they use apps such as Snapchat whose users often mistakably believe that their photos and written messages can only be viewed temporarily. A large part of our job as educators is to prepare our students to become successful in their current and future lives, and being responsible on social media must fit into that mission.

 

Beyond safe-use concerns, social media literacy is also important to teach our students due to the consequences associated with the information users are inundated with constantly. In the digital age, we are surrounded by new information everywhere we go from “Breaking News” headlines on our television to the Apple News updates on our phones to the political messages and advocacy campaigns that populate social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook. Misinformation runs rampant on social media, particularly on sites like Instagram and Facebook but most notably TikTok. At twenty years old, I cannot understate the number of times that my friends have told me about something they learned on TikTok as if it was absolute fact. On TikTok, there is an acute lack of checks on the validity of information, with users able to simplify complex topics into one-minute videos or even make up false information and spread it as if it is true. If young adults my age are fooled into believing all of the information they consume on TikTok, then our high school students are likely consuming such content without critically evaluating it as well. In order to rectify our students’ lack of information filters, we must teach them how to determine whether the content they consume on social media platforms is trustworthy by checking it against credible news sources, evaluating the credibility of the user, and identifying advertisements. We already push for this kind of critical engagement when we teach them about media literacy, but we must apply it to social media content as well. 

Finally, it is also paramount to teach social media literacy due to the consequences that arise from social media’s constructed reality. As many of us know from personal experience, social media essentially contains its own hidden curriculum. When we view influencers’ posts and even our friends’ posts, we consume potentially harmful implicit messages about health and personal appearance, a consequence that is especially relevant to teenagers. For example, frequent exposure to photos that have been somehow edited to create an ideal appearance is associated with body image issues, and research indicates links between such exposure and the rate of eating disorders and the desire to get cosmetic surgery in young women. Recent authorship on social media literacy suggests that it functions as a protective factor against such consequences, providing individuals with the applied critical thinking skills to reduce risks. While this may seem like a minor aspect of social media literacy, failing to safely differentiate reality from the constructed reality presented in users’ posts is a major consequence that teenagers in particular suffer from, and it negatively affects their mental health. If we aim to support our students through mental health struggles and incorporate SEL into our schools, then we must address these consequences on social media as well.  

How many photos do you think these women took to land the “perfect” one? How long do you think it took to edit them just right? Teenagers are inundated with perfect photos just like these on Instagram every day.

As an ELA and Social Studies teacher, social media literacy fits neatly into my curriculum. I feel a major responsibility to incorporate social media into classroom applications of the critical thinking skills that I must already help my students develop. Not only will my students analyze, evaluate, and synthesize interpretations of literature, but they will also do so with current news media, visual narratives, artistic performances, and social media posts. I hope to also incorporate social media literacy into my classroom through SEL lessons, as social media certainly affects our students’ mental health. Clearly, I am passionate about this integration of social media literacy into my content areas, and I am curious to see how some of you might do so with other content areas, or if you think that it would not make sense to attempt to. 

If my blog post has piqued your interest and you wish to know more about social media literacy or how to teach it, I suggest reading this brief article that re-orients 5 key components of media literacy as components of social media literacy: https://www.edutopia.org/blog/social-media-five-key-concepts-stacey-goodman 

Source: 

National Center for Biotechnology Information. (2021). “Understanding Social Media Literacy: A Systematic Review of the Concept and Its Competences.” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(15), 8807. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9325204/#B31-ijerph-19-08807