Social Media Today
& Gen Z'ers
Image source: YPulse
How does Generation Z use social media?
To get an idea of how Gen Z uses social media on a daily basis, I interviewed one ultimate Gen Z'er: my younger sister. For anonymity's sake, we shall call her Princess. She is 20 years old and will be a 3rd-year college student in the upcoming fall. What I find absolutely interesting is even though she is a few years younger than me, we are completely different when it comes to social media!
One of the first questions I asked Princess was "how do you use social media?" Princess shared that she uses it on her phone, duh, for communication with others and for her own personal use. She uses the apps Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and sometimes Facebook but that's for old people according to her. (ouch)
How does social media affect Generation Z?
I then asked Princess how social media affects her pretty negatively most of the time rather than positivity. She sees social media as a bad influence because of how it affects her mental health. One the of biggest reasons why is affects her mental health is due to the distractions. When she gets distracted by social media, she doesn't do her school work, which leads to her not being motivated, which leads to doing poorly in school, causing her anxiety and depression. This led to her talking about how it affects other people's mental health.
Princess goes onto talking about seeing negative posts on social media, such as bullying. What she finds sort of interesting is how in her current age group, she does not see online bullying all that often. Princess recalls that there was way more bullying online during her middle school years than now.
I found this conversation rather interesting, since Princess kept focusing on the negative aspects of social media versus the positive. She notes that there are positive things on social media, but she remembers more of the negative. When asking my younger brother, who is 13 years old about social media he agreed with Princess: that he sees more negativity than positivity. I would have assumed most Gen Z social media users enjoy social media because they see more positive tings than negative.
Social media at school
I decided to ask Princess about her thoughts on whether or not social media should be used at school. She personally thinks that schools should not use social media in schools, even if it's appropriately, because it's too distracting. Princess believes social media should only be used outside of school, for personal use during their own free time. Mainly to communicate, meet new people, and find out new information.
After hearing this I decided to change the question and ask if technology should be used in schools. Her answers went a full 180, stating that technology in general is important in school. To Princess, long time ago there was no computers or internet for students to use. Now, it's important to have technology whether it's computers or phones.
Jumping back on the social media wagon, I asked Princess "Do you think as your age group gets older, students will use social media more in school?" She said yes. She also talked about teachers using social media. She in general think social media in school is not a great idea, but if a teacher used social media it should be entirely separate accounts. For personal use, teachers should use their personal accounts. If the teacher had a profession/classroom account on social media specifically used for teaching and the students, than that is okay. Princess believes t's important for teachers to keep their personal life out of the classroom social media as much as possible. I did find this interesting, as in the physical classroom I know I try to relate to my students more, but I do find myself keeping certain things off my teacher social media accounts.
Social media in classrooms for Gen Z: the overall thoughts
Princess desrcibed social media in one word: toxic. She sees all the problems that are caused on social media such as politics and arguments for example. However, she stared her thoughts that if students were to use social media in the classroom for JUST class, there would be no toxicity. She thinks that people in the classroom should be aware of what they are doing in the classroom, and try to stay out of any drama since they may not know their classmates that well compared to their friends or even enemies who are on social media. Social media on classrooms should focus on exactly that: the classroom. Her suggestions for classroom social media apps are Pinterest, Instagram, and Twitter.
What Princess ends the interview with is saying she thinks that social media won't change and it will always be the same, whether it is in classroom or for personal use.
Final thoughts
Image source: PR Daily
I learned something new and interesting about Gen Z: not everything thinks that social media is a positive thing in their lives. Now, of course other Gen Z'ers will have different thoughts and opinions on this topic, so it will be interesting to ask my students during class about this. I think my next steps would be to see what my students say and compare their answers to how my siblings have answered these questions about social media and using in the classroom.
As a millennial, I find is very interesting how different my thoughts on social media are compared to the Gen Z'ers. I believe social media, as how I see it being used, it mainly used for personal use and entertainment. Sharing funny videos, sharing relatable posts, and posting goofy and fun photos, and sometimes every now and then seeing important news being shared. I think, and see, more positivity on social media than negativity since what I use it for is not what most Gen Z students probably use it for.
It will be interesting to see what others will have to say about this! Social media: a very different world for everyone.
Fascinating information! Thanks so much for sharing.
ReplyDelete