Overview

If you're anything like the average user, you might describe your relationship with social media as complicated. On one hand, your engagement in educational, awareness-raising, social-media groups and communities can have an empowering impact on your life and the world around you. On the other hand, you have witnessed people using social media as a platform for expressing divisive and hateful attitudes that leave you wondering: How can something that is supposed to connect us leave us feeling so disconnected?

The attitudes, beliefs, and values that we convey with our online presence can have a dramatic positive or negative impact on the well-being of ourselves and others. However, when we choose to use social media as a mechanism for improving the human condition, it can transform lives for the betterone post at a time.

Prompt

For this journal activity, write in 3 to 5 sentences to each of the following rubric criteria:

• Describe the implications of using the experiences and outcomes that a person chooses to post about on social media as a measure of your sense of adequacy.
• Describe the implications of using the attitudes and abilities that a person chooses to post about on social media as a confirmation of your own attitudes and abilities.
• Describe the implications of comparing your abilities and outcomes to the abilities and outcomes that others choose to publish about on social media.
• Describe the implications of using reciprocity as a measure of the quality of your relationships with others on social media.
• Describe what type of impression you believe a profile image makes across various platforms (e.g., personal, such as Facebook and Instagram; professional, such as LinkedIn) and why the social media identity you choose to convey matters.
• Describe the ways in which the attitudes, beliefs, and values that are broadcasted on social media can influence others to take constructive action and effect positive change in their lives.