What are the benefits of social media?
what positives can you gain from social?
Social media helps children communicate, share and learn, and offers opportunity for children to practice key 21st century skills they will use into the future.
How can social media assist in building digital skills?
Technology has become a core part of our world. Ongoing developments into mixed reality, automation and artificial intelligence will have a major impact on what jobs look like in the future. For this reason, digital skills are becoming not only important, but essential. The Foundation for Young Australians report on New Work Smarts (PDF, 1.9MB) predicts that future jobs will be less focused on routine tasks and more on working with people and solving problems. Young people can use social media to develop these skills.
Social media can help children build digital skills in:
navigating and sharing digital content
responsible online interaction
building an online identity
maintaining their digital reputation.
How can social media help young people learn?
Using social media and the internet help your child with their learning. The Internet has given us access to huge amounts of quality information, and social media is a great tool for finding and sharing quality information. Children can find different types of information about areas of interest and topics they are learning at school. Social media can also connect you with experts and communities of learners.
Learning on social media can occur when:
reading articles
asking questions
replying to posts
watching video tutorials
talking with friends.
discussing topics with other people
How can social media groups help young people learn about themselves and others?
Social media allows young people to get to know and learn about new and diverse groups of people. The Pew Research Center in 2018 found that teenagers used social media to meet people from different backgrounds, get diverse views and demonstrate their support for causes. A majority of teenagers who spent time in online groups said that those groups helped them meet new people, feel more accepted, work through their feelings on important issues and get through tough times in their life.
In general, social media groups can provide:
a sense of belonging and community
access to support from like-minded individuals
an appreciation of different perspectives
reduced isolation
a monitored discussion environment.
How can social media help to develop critical thinking skills?
As technology has made it easier for people to share a huge range of news and information, it has also become necessary to think about the reliability of online content. It can be difficult to tell whether something is real or fake, especially when it looks like it comes from a trusted friend or an official source. You can help your child to develop their critical thinking skills by giving them strategies to judge the reliability of different sources of information.
Critical thinking skills can be built by:
discussing how choice of words, videos and images can change how you think about information
identifying trusted sources of information and discussing what makes something trustworthy
teaching children to question the reliability and the source for information, both online and in other media.
How can social media help young people develop identity?
While older people might think of their online and offline lives as very different things, children and teenagers can find this separation confusing. Young people have grown up in a world where the distinction between online and offline is increasingly blurred, and their online presence is an important part of their identity.
For young people, an online identity is:
an extension of themselves
a way to explore different parts of themselves
a way to share or explore interests that are not available offline.
An online identity is not:
a ‘fake’ identity
a way to lie to peers and friends
a means of exploring bad behaviours.
There are things social media does not help with including with personal communication. Click here for my article “Is texting effecting the way we communicate?”