I think, as I touched on briefly in the book talk, it's hard to find a way to incorporate the idea of social media over-usage into my teaching other than the way the books did. They kinda had it as a background side effect, something that drove the plot forward, but wasn't really a main theme of the book. Adolescence is hard with all rampant emotions, and throwing social media into the mix to give students these false pretenses of how the world works and how they should look at themselves is really disheartening. What I can really do for this is just give warnings and talk about it with them as a thing I worry about, but not craft a whole lesson around. Besides, I'm not that smart anyway, I'd have to figure out a solution and boy oh boy is that difficult.
I think the best way I can take this a step further and turn it into a sort of collage zine, like a sort of big warning sign, I think? Idk, tune in next time!
Hi Jack! This is such an important topic to bring up in a classroom! I can see where this would be a hard topic to teach, especially when most of society keeps getting social media pushed onto it! So this is definitely a tough one to teach but I like the idea of just addressing it and making sure that students know that they don't have to be pressured into it, and that there IS a life without social media! I wish someone would have told me that more often as I was growing up! I've also been trying to detach from social media, or at least just use more of what I want! Really the only app I use is Instagram and I've been using that app in a way where I've been trying to align it with my personality and who I am in real life, and just have fun with it! I post what I want in the moment and look at my pictures as if it was my photo diary!
ReplyDeleteYour advice to "step away" is a key start to the social media use. The next question to come to my mind is how do we as teachers or youth-interested adults make visible the many pathways available other than the 24/7 screens? Thank you for sharing some books that helped you (or not) to think deeper about your own role in guiding and mentoring these pathways.
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