The Intrusion of Social Media in Learning
Social media has evolved into a tool for creating and promoting the "self," creating a tension between encouraging individual expression and overemphasizing the self in a collaborative setting.
Social media has been around long enough that we have gone through a huge learning curve regarding its functionality and potential — and now we are experiencing the results of its uses in various social, professional and educational contexts. For some years, educators have swayed between excluding and including social media in learning environments and classrooms, searching for a balance between its immediate "connecting" impact and the applied uses in collaborative exchanges in learning. It seems the dominant use of social media has been as a tool for personal exchange, focusing on an individual's authenticity of voice and production; users enjoy the overall control of what is said, displayed, communicated, imaged about "self."
Yet, the obsessive focus on self has had repercussions. While social media technology is accessible and user-friendly, as well as highly intuitive overall, the implications for the positioning of "self" in digital social exchanges were, in my opinion, unanticipated. Certainly, the impact on educational exchanges in classrooms or online has been intense. Educators, teaching students of various ages, agree that the positioning of "self" has evolved, impacting many organized group activity exchanges or project exchanges. Being "self-mediated" and "self-published" means that in any dynamic exchange, individuals increasingly require control over how and when the "self" is involved and produced.
Publication of Self
Of course, we are now familiar with the concept of "selfies" — and we have learned, over these years of the emergence of this phenomenon, that having someone else take your picture is considered less authentic than taking one's own picture or "selfie." In fact, a selfie is now regarded as much more than a picture, and the terms are becoming decreasingly synonymous. The connection between self-capture/self-promotion and personal control/choice is regarded as authentic, and supersedes a posed or "fake" capture by someone else. Therefore, the idea that a selfie is who I really am means that it is a personal creation, and one that is powerful and cannot be challenged. Social media platforms, in general, are predominantly about their users interacting with and producing "self" through fully customizable environments, rich with digital pictures and posts, icons, GIFs, memes and emojis — all being used to carefully craft whatever or whoever the individual deems important for others to see/hear/engage with at any given moment. In an article for the Huffington Post, Zac Thompson stated, "It's no secret that social media has made us more comfortable with the idea of self-absorption."
This is incredibly empowering, in some regard, for the individual — and increases the expectation in various environments of individual choice and the control of self to engage or disengage according to the individual desire or interest. In this reality, authentic choice is vital and, indeed, more important than any generic or prescribed engagement. Increasingly, however, psychologists are discussing the "downside" of this obsession with self, as it can also be destructive. For example, if what I have carefully mediated and produced is either disregarded or disagreed with, then that is a personal attack or rejection. This ultimately can lead to individuals becoming less rather than more confident and, ultimately, choosing to disengage rather than engage further.
As Katharine Hopson, writing in an article for NPR's Health News, stated, referencing a research study from the University of Pittsburgh: "It turns out that the people who reported spending the most time on social media — more than two hours a day — had twice the odds of perceived social isolation than those who said they spent a half hour per day or less on those sites. And people who visited social media platforms most frequently, 58 visits per week or more, had more than three times the odds of perceived social isolation than those who visited fewer than nine times per week. The study appeared Monday in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine."