Student Post: Hannah Spohn: The Ills of Social Media

As educators, I think it is fair to say that there is already a lot of pressure and work on our plates. And adding Twitter into the mix would only escalate that. 

For starters, Twitter is a platform with so much content that it is not only overwhelming to look at, but for me, it is too overwhelming to consider how I would make it safe for my students. 

My four biggest issues are: 

• Online Safety

• Parent consent

• My responsibilities

• Relevancy

Predators and just bad people online have gotten increasingly sneaky as the internet has continued to develop. And Twitter has little oversight to stop them from creating an online persona that my students would be exposed to. And while I can slightly control what is going on in the classroom, I fear that if they continue to use Twitter in their normal lives, they could be led to a dangerous place either virtually, or in reality. 

Secondly, parent consent becomes an issue, sure, I can get their consent for their student to be on Twitter for educational issues. However, like I said I can’t control whether or not that student goes home and continues to use Twitter for personal reasons. Of course, that falls under the parents’ responsibility, but I don’t want to introduce something to my students that could lead to some point of trouble. 

Which stretches into the responsibilities that this creates for me in my classroom. As I said, Twitter is full of content, but not all good content. And while I can do my best with things like “GoGuardian” to monitor students' electronic use, I cannot be everywhere on every screen all at once. And just one click by my students could cause problems. 

Lastly, Twitter isn’t all that relevant anymore. Sure, a lot of Millennial and older Gen Z people use it, but even since Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter (now X) there has been a difference in activity. I actually don’t think I know a single person who uses Twitter. I don’t even think I have had an account in years. 

I don’t really see the point in using this platform for all of these reasons, but I could keep going. I think forms of social media can be great for education, but this platform would not be something I would be willing to use while teaching.