This document discusses considerations for teaching social media use. It begins by noting that while digital literacy focuses on skills, most people use social media for social reasons. It then provides statistics on widespread social media use. The document discusses how social media has become integral to daily life and both positive and negative impacts. It emphasizes the importance of understanding why we engage with social media and consequences of choices. The document then summarizes research on why older adults both do and do not use Facebook, focusing on themes like privacy concerns, quality of interaction, and exclusion. It introduces the concept of "value alignment" to help negotiate rules of engagement. Finally, it discusses teaching social media norms to reduce uncertainty for students.

1. [r]evolution:
Practices and
Considerations for
Teaching
Social Media Use

2. Why are we here?
When we discuss digital literacy as active and informed
participation with digital media, our perspective as educators
tends to focus on “skills-based participation”:
Word Processing!
Basic Computer/Internet Use!
Information/Fake News Literacy!
Job Search/Application!
…but these aren’t why most people use digital media.

3. Social Media has become the driving force in our culture.
3.78b social media users, ~48% of world pop.
2/3 U.S. adults Facebook users.
84% of adults 18-29 are social media users (81% 30-49, 73% 50-64, 45%
65+)
81% U.S. adults watch YouTube.
40% U.S. adults use Instagram.
70% Daily Facebook Users.
(Pew Research, April 2021)

4. Living in a Facebook World
• Social Media has become an integral part of every day experience.
• This creates “naturalness” ; We overlook or undervalue our own reasons
for engaging with these platforms.
• Is this addiction?
• Daily media use is not new; reading the paper and watching the nightly
news were ritual pastimes for decades before the dawn of social media.
• At the same time, it is well documented that internet use (search engines in
particular) have changed the ways we look for and process information,
with instant gratification the new norm in many regards.
We cannot/should not teach students to utilize social media without
understanding why we do or do not engage with these platforms,
and what the consequences for either choice are.

5. Reflect & Share:
When did you first join social media, and why?
Do you use Facebook or any other SM on a daily basis?
Before you had social media, were you apprehensive about it?

6. Why older adults don’t use Facebook
Survey found that older adults who don’t use
social networks think:
1) Social networks offer only “cold and
shallow forms of communication for
gossip and self-obsessiveness”
2) Social media are a major infringement on
privacy, rife with consequences including
the threat of viruses and identity theft
3) Even if they did want to use it, the
technology has passed them by and they
lack the skills to do so.
Luders and Brandtzaeg (2017)

7. Why older adults don’t use Facebook
Themes of focus group discussions included:
1) Technology has progressed too quickly, offering few
opportunities to “keep up”
2) Social media represents “wasted” or “lost time” that could be
better spent on more productive or social tasks.
3) Social media’s prominence has created a nostalgia for pre-
digital times, when social relationships were perceived to be
more genuine; “people used to make eye contact and talk to
each other.”
Kania-Lundholm (2019)

8. Why older adults don’t use Facebook
Interviews revealed that non-user motivations included:
1) Privacy Concerns: “People exposing the world to every
intimate detail about themselves are asking for trouble.”
2) Need for Quality Interaction: “Face-to-face communication is
best of all. Why? You can clarify understanding, determine
level of interest, goodwill, anger.”
3) Preference for familiar technologies (email, phone calls, etc)
Jung et al, (2017)

9. Why older adults don’t use Facebook
Themes of focus group discussions included:
4) Triviality of Communication: “We did not want to be so
much a part of the lives of our friends that we learn when they climb
out of the bathtub, when they brush their teeth, heading out the door,
etc.”
5) Time Commitment: “You get on it and you discover hours
have gone by…Time gets very constrained when you get older, it takes
so much time just to get through your life.”
6) Frustration with Skill Level: “I am not skilled enough with
technology to protect myself…”; “I would be willing to do it if someone
would teach me”; “I would go to a class if somebody offered one”
Jung et al, (2017)

10. Reflect & Share:
Do these opinions resonate with you?
Do they call to mind comments made by your
patrons, students, or family members?

11. Why older adults do use Facebook
1) Keeping in touch with inaccessible
people & reacquiring lost contacts
2) Sharing/viewing photographs from
family and friends
3) Social surveillance of family and
friends
4) Responding to pressure from
younger family members.
5) Convenient communication with
others
6) Curiosity
Jung et al, (2017)

12. Factors in deciding to use Facebook
1) Feeling of Exclusion/FOMO
2) Assisted Learning in the form of
workshops/books/vocabulary print-outs.
3) Emotional coping with fear/frustration/stress; “The
Teacher said ‘You cannot destroy it. Whatever
button you press, it does not matter. You can
always go back home via the home button. There
is nothing you can break.’ Well, I internalized that.
Now I think, ‘We’ll see.”

13. Value Alignment
People have legitimate concerns
about privacy, quality of
communication, and the addictive
qualities of social media, but many
still want to use social media in spite
of these concerns due to the
rationale laid out in the previous two
slides.
As a result, space is needed to
negotiate their rules of engagement
with Facebook/SM’s: a process
called value alignment.
Hage et al (2020)

14. Value Alignment
Value Alignment is a vulnerable process because it
requires us to decide which of our concerns we are
willing to compromise in order to adapt to a new
media.
Students adopting a new media need to be taught
how to negotiate those compromises, or will be
otherwise unable to make them successfully and will
either A) become alienated by new media, or B)
compromise their beliefs entirely on behalf of new
media.

15. Value Alignment
What does this look like in practice?
Alan dislikes the “shallowness” of Facebook, and so does not
post content of his own. He does use it to connect with his
grandchildren and long lost high school friends.
Similarly, Christine has concerns about privacy on Facebook,
and so limits her friends list to 15 of her close family and friends.
David and Anita don’t want to waste time on Facebook, but
share an account so they can see the pictures that their family
members post.

16. Value Alignment
Many of these alignments occur along the lines of privacy; an
important role of the educator becomes helping learners to
understand not just the UI/basic structure of Facebook, but
the privacy tools available to them as well.
In this way, the educator facilitates both cognitive and
emotional learning, providing instruction on how use the
mechanics of Facebook as well as enabling them to make
the privacy adjustments that allow for successful value
alignment.

17. Value Alignment
Let’s take a look at the Northstar Digital Literacy Standards
for Social Media

18. Social Media Norms
Norms are unspoken cultural rules that
exist in every social context including
social media.
While norms are typically learned through
observation, anxiety about norm
violations is common when unfamiliar
with the specific cultural practices of a
new environment
By introducing students to social media
norms, we can reduce their uncertainties
about how to interact online.

19. Social Media Norms
Facebook Norms include:
• Understanding the private/public conversation distinction; it is
considered unproper to engage in lengthy one-on-one
conversation in the comment section of a status update.
• Self-censoring of coarse language, sexually explicit content,
and personal attacks on others; these are also often reported
and removed as violations of Facebook’s TOS.
• Public sharing of emotion/personal life; more on this…

20. Social Media Norms
Instead of public expressions of emotions, Facebook users
often deploy the following tactics to request emotional
support:
• Redirecting attention to others – “Please keep [husband] and
[daughter] in your thoughts while I am away. I’m in good hands at Mercy, but
he is on his own right now”
• Projecting Optimism – “2014 was a great year for me and I made many
new friends. Sadly I lost two friends on the east coast and west coast. My
New Year’s resolution is to keep their spirit of adventure alive and keep their
memories close to me!”
• Self-Deprecation/Sarcasm: “Currently running on cold brew and the
naïve hope that I’ll pass all my midterms”

21. Social Media Norms
Rich Storytelling:
“Visiting Mom this weekend…she has declined a lot in the
last month and will soon be moving into the highest care
section of her facility. It also mean the dresser she had
always had…will be going away. This means the center
drawer and cupboard where she stored jewelry and other
things that we looked at as kids and really identify as part of
Mom have been sorted through…By no means the worst of
the sorting but it is almost the final one which makes us
very sad…I really miss my mom.”

22. Social Media Norms
‘Vaguebooking’ (referred to also as “subtweeting” when
used as a means of passive aggression):
“pizza and chocolate chips because screw today.”
“You know those people who go around giving free hugs to
random people on the street? We need more of those
people. I would totally love some giant hugs from people
who have no intention other than to spread love. I think
everyone could use some more love and hugs. Love. Hugs.
Love.”

23. Social Media Norms
A consistent component of social media
etiquette across all platforms is the notion that
it is rude to post too many times on the same
day; what is “too many” is many ways defined
by the platform.
This is considered to be similar to “hogging the
conversation”

24. Reflect & Share:
What other norms do you associated with social media?
Do you see this etiquette followed?
Is it useful or debilitating to give students these kinds of
“training wheels”?