I first began on social media when I created my first Instagram account at around age 12 (Shhh don’t tell anyone I lied about my birthday!!!) at first, I enjoyed the initial intentions of social media as someone with family who didn’t live very close to me (Kamloops and Vancouver). I loved being able to connect with the family I didn’t get to see very often. It was also a nice way of seeing what my friends were up to outside of school.
Throughout my teens I felt a need to be active on social media. I’d post fairly frequently (once weekly or biweekly), and I definitely enjoyed the mini dopamine rushes I got from watching that “liked” count go up just a little for each post. Though I never had an overly negative experience on social media, my general interest for being involved with it decreased significantly.
Today, I find social media to be quite intimidating and unappealing. In a mini survey I completed in my women’s history course last year, I concluded that social media, despite its benefits, has become a manipulative environment for most of its users into the submission to gender roles. Amongst other negative aspects to social media – lowing self-confidence, motivation, and productivity – the negative impact of its manipulative algorithms on society has led me to be a little more stand offish towards using it. I post only occasionally now and its only to keep family updated on my life. I do however believe it could be a great tool for keeping parents informed on what’s going on in their student’s classroom and would consider using a blog format social media page as a way of interacting with students’ families.
Here, I’ve linked a couple of teacher Instagram accounts I find inspirational:
