Reframing My Mindset on Social Media

If you have read some of my prior posts, I have spent plenty of time establishing the fact that I am not a major social media user, that I have cut back my time spent on various apps, and that I am, in general, much more of a taker than a giver when it comes to social media. With so much of the focus on negative aspects of social media, I think sometimes it is important to be reminded that there are a lot of positive uses when it comes to social media as well. Plus, I think almost all teachers are familiar with the concept of how we frame things to students, and why this is so important. I can remember a professional development session I had in which I was first introduced to the negativity bias, which in essence states that we as humans have a much stronger reaction and clearer memory when it comes to things we experience as negatives over positives. We will dwell on past mistakes or rude comments far more than we will a piece of praise or a great accomplishment. Similarly, how we frame instructions or redirection can make a huge difference in how our students respond to them. If we give a redirection that is focused on blame or on negativity, there is no relationship being built. But if we frame what we say as ‘I know you can do this well’ or ‘I saw how hard you were working before’, students can see the positive potential in themselves and focus on that. If we frame instruction as saying students can only show learning in one way, it feels limiting. If we instead seek out other ways, we become liberating. Being able to find a reason why we can do something is much more impactful than only finding reasons not to. The same can be said for social media-if we only ever dwell on what not to do, or what dangers lie in a certain app, we remove potentially impactful experiences, because these do abound on social media.

With that in mind, I created this infographic in which I reframe the focus on social media, looking at six things students should be doing on social media, in order to harness the great impacts that it can have:

Image Source, created by site author on Canva

I originally debated including important aspects of social media that are typically framed as negatives, and instead changing them to positives. For example, changing ‘don’t share your passwords’ to ‘always protect your passwords’. However, that felt a little too simplistic, and honestly did not grasp what my intention was, which was more of a re-framing of mindset, where the true positives of social media became the focus. In my mind, connectedness is the greatest asset of social media-we can connect to others around the world, and share so many different things in our profiles. I feel like this is what really drove some of the components of my infographic-suggesting students use this connection for good. This could be by using their ability to connect with others in a positive way by leaving likes and positive comments, or by using the ability to connect to share their passions. Focusing on these positive uses of social media is what I feel I often neglect to keep in mind, and that is what I feel students could be reminded of if our goal is to re-frame how they use social media, that it become for the good (this is what I would say my goal is, but I do realize that some may disagree).

Image Source

I designed the infographic to be something that my colleagues and I could post in our classrooms. I currently teach 7th grade, but I honestly feel as though this infographic could be applicable to ages older and younger than my own students, since the overall concept of approaching social media in these ways is not age-dependent. I also feel it’s important to note that I am not advocating for this being the only way in which social media interaction or digital citizenship is addressed. However, I do feel that having messages like these, where the potential positives are highlighted by reminders of the good that social media can do, are very important in educating upon digital citizenship, so that all sides of the concept are shown. Plus, it will help those who might trend toward the more curmudgeonly view (looking directly at myself) remember that social media, despite any drawbacks, is certainly not going away any time soon, and that we can still be respectful of the good it can do.