Social Media

How would you describe your mood right now?

Now let's see if your use of social media might affect it.

Spend 10 minutes using social media of your choice - browse, scroll, read, watch, and interact as you normally would. You can use any platform you see as social media.

Now that the 10 minutes have passed, reflect upon the following questions and discuss your feedback in groups:

1. What social media platforms/apps did you look at during the 10 minutes? 

2. About how many ads did you see? What were the ads for? Why do you think those ads came up? 

3. Is your mood different now after spending 10 minutes on social media? If yes, how is it different? 

4. How would you describe the nature of the content you saw? News, information, political commentary, someone building their brand, someone sharing a good time they had, someone sharing interesting/creative photos or content, humor, pleas for help/activism, etc.  

5. What was the balance of you interacting (posting, commenting, liking) vs you reading, watching, or looking without interacting? 

6. Would you say you know most of the people making the posts you looked at or are they people you have never met? 

7. Overall was this a more positive, negative, or neutral experience? Explain. 

8. What, if anything could you do to make your social media time more positive? 

Which types of Social Media do you know? Can you give examples of social media platforms that fall into the categories mentioned in the visual below?

What would you say are the pros and cons of using social media? Work in groups to make a list of ALL the advantages and drawbacks that you can think of.

Then, discuss how the drawbacks could be counteracted.