Resources for Teachers - Social Media

Respecting Yourself and Others Online Workshop

The Respecting Yourself and Others Online workshop was created to provide tweens and young teens with strategies and knowledge that will help them respect themselves, respect others and respect the space when using social media.

Social Media - Introduction

Social media is best understood as a collection of capabilities, or affordances, overlaid on various platforms. Instagram, for instance, is a platform for visual and video media with social media capabilities, while Scratch is a gaming platform with social media capabilities. It represents a major change from older media, shifting from one-way communication to a decentralized network where everyone can be a producer.

The Privacy Dilemma

In this lesson students learn the ways that the apps they use are designed to encourage them to share more information—both with other users and with the apps themselves. They are then introduced to the idea of persuasive design or “dark patterns” and investigate whether these are used to make it more difficult to opt out of data collection on popular apps. Finally, the class creates a “rogues’ gallery” to help them identify dark patterns when they encounter them.

Rules of notice in social media

Historically, broadcast media followed a hierarchical model where a small elite group of wealthy producers shaped the public sphere and sent one-way communication to a much larger mass of receivers, often promoting views favorable to the status quo.

Your Connected Life: A Teen’s Guide to Life Online

The Your Connected Life guide is designed to help students who are just entering high school balance the demands of their offline life with their digital one.