Social Media in the ELA Classroom

 As time moves on how will we, as future educators, combat unstoppable, evolving technology? With Unit 3 revolving around social media, it was an eye-opening lesson that introduced how this emerging literature composition will inevitably be implemented into the classroom, but also highlights the negative impacts it will have/currently has on students worldwide.

In the reading, Unearthing the Problem: Social Emotional Learning in the High School English Classroom by Julie Harding, she provides her student's electronic usage, but also introduces the negative impacts it brings. To begin, Harding allowed her students to set their own goals for lowering their electronic usage, and eventually, reflected on their findings over the course of two weeks. At first, they were seeing near 100+ pickups per day with the average being 47. The students were in agreement that their usage should be brought down, and they did bring it down for other important tasks. To see that Harding's students were not only interested in bringing their usage down, but they actually did it even though one student stated, "You have no idea how hard that was for me, Mrs. Harding" (Harding 77) really brings me hope about future generations strength to combat "overtaking" technology. This ability to be self-aware about technology usage is something that I wish I had in high school. I had basically unlimited amount of technology usage from a young age till graduation, and I think that this didn't really affect my educational performance but absolutely affected me in other social/mental ways.

To continue, technology is a scarily intricate medium that requires proper education on how to use it predominantly for those too young to understand. Digital citizenship, including digital etiquette, footprints, privacy, and identity, NEED to be taught to students so they know how to navigate such a prevalent aspect of their lives. In Middle School Students' Social Media Use, the authors provide some statistics about student Internet sharing that surprised me a fair amount. According to the journal, 82% of younger teens share photos, 56% share their school's name, 50% their relationship status, and 11% share their phone numbers (Martin, Wang, Petty, Wang, and Wilkins 216). Most of these seem like things that I have shared before, but the one that caught my attention was the percentage of students sharing their phone number. Also in this journal, there are numerous statistics regarding sexually inappropriate materials (40%), inappropriate encounters (28%), and harassment/bullying via websites (28%) (Martin, Wang, Petty, Wang, and Wilkins 219). Sexually inappropriate material is littered all over the internet. Teaching students about digital citizenship will not only prepare them to live safe lives online, but it could also teach them how to avoid, or what to do with, this type of material. For no reason should students this young be exposed to vulgar material, but unfortunately it is unavoidable with every person forever connected. I think that if students are going to be going into this online space, then they need to be taught the proper ways to present themselves online from obscene materials, bad people, and horrible long-lasting effects. All of these statistics are perfect examples of why it must be done.

Furthermore, mental health is an extremely important, and continuously growing, problem for all of the world, but especially with students. In Julie Harding's article, Unearthing the Problem: Social Emotional Learning in the High School English Classroom, she provides a study regarding student mental health that are shocking. Harding states how a 2018 study showed that 96 percent of teens saw anxiety and depression as a problem among their peers with 70 percent of them saw it as a "major problem" (Harding 73), and she further shows that, from 2010-2015, the number of thirteen- to eighteen-year-olds committing suicide rose by 31 percent (Harding 73). 96 percent of students on this study is such a large number, and especially seeing how almost the entire majority deemed it a major problem. Also, an increase in suicide numbers is so heartbreaking. Technology doesn't help these feelings of anxiety and depression, but there is a way that educators and schools can start to show students that they aren't alone. I had never heard of Social Emotional Learning, but after reading Harding's synopsis of it, it must be integrated into classrooms for the sake of the students. According to Harding, "SEL oversteps the traditional boundaries of the public school system by teaching students how to process emotions) (Harding 74). This way of breaking the school/student barrier is exactly what students need, especially in a time full of technology-induced things anxiety, depression, social viewpoints, and more. I don't like to say I have struggled with these things, but I have dealt with them for such a long time. It is exhausting and I wish that, in high school and even now, I was taught to transfer these negative problems towards something more beneficial. SEL needs to be implemented into the classroom so that students can manage, or deal with, these feelings in a more proactive manner.

Last but not least, who doesn't love silly little pictures with silly little text? Memes are a seemingly fun internet fad that is nothing more than just a picture with words. Although this is true, they can also bring a lot of benefit to people. Memes allow information to be conveyed to everyone on the Internet. In particular, from the article You All Made Dank Memes by Dominic D. Wells, he elaborates on how social media influence allows important topics like politics to be spread to the masses. Although this sharing of information is widespread, it also unlocks the share of false information. In the article, Wells states, "One study found 115 pro-Trump fake stories shared on Facebook 30-million times and 41 pro-Clinton fake stories shared 7.6-million times" (Wells 241). With a large amount of fake information being spread around, Wells' political meme activity comes into play. He had his students use memes to connect media with real life political issues. For example, one student used a SpongeBob meme while another used one from The Lord of the Rings. The creation of these memes allowed the students to think more critically about the political statements and showed that they were thinking at various levels. Memes, even though they can be for entertainment, are a perfect way to not only spread information, but also to help create critical thinking skills to decipher fake news spread on the Internet.

This is a TED Talk from social media expert Bailey Parnell that I came across on YouTube. I chose to include this into my blog post because I think that mental health for students is super important, but social media affects EVERYONE. She states multiple ways in which social media impacts mental health, such as FOMO, social currency, and highlight reels, but also includes ways to break this cycle of obsession. All of these topics are important for all to understand so that mental health can improve instead of decline.