I would say that I have almost a negative relationship with social media. I am constantly scrolling through social media. About 30% of my social media activity involves looking for recipes or watching other teachers on Tik Tok with their new engaging ways to keep middle years students entertained throughout the day. My family group chat consists of Tik Tok links back and forth and back and forth. My 88 year-old grandpa stays up until after midnight watching Tiktok. On the other hand, my husband does not have one ounce of social media on his phone. He “has” all the social media accounts, but never uses them. He likes playing games on his phone instead. Clash of Clans is riveting, folks. 

Although I spend a lot of time on social media, I am not a frequent poster. I have not had any negative effects on my life (except lack of sleep due to scrolling maybe). Actually, I am going to say the constant need to keep my house as clean as the home influencers, my wardrobe as trendy as the fashion influencers and my classroom as organized and colour coded as Teacher Tok. Similarly, I found after a hard day of teaching, I would come home to Teacher Tok to find a whole bunch of other teachers putting in their resignations because of the poor working conditions that U.S. teachers have. I start to wander down the rabbit hole of “will I quit my job one day?”. Definitely not, but at the wrong time or wrong mindset it wears on me. Another thing that comes to mind is finding out terrible news such as people in your life have passed away on social media, which is sometimes right when you wake up in the morning, or at recess, or right before bed. Professionally, it has not affected me personally, but the moment I am dealing with a situation with my students involving social media I get so defeated. “So and so said this about me on snapchat”, I have heard it time and time again. I have had students who don’t even have social media accounts share that they are still getting involved because other students are talking about them online. As a teacher, my advice has always been “just don’t have it”, but really that is not even the solution. WHAT IS THE SOLUTION? I start getting angry and frustrated with my students writing this. 

The positive effects of social media are still there. When I am having a bad day, I can access those accounts that bring me laughter and joy. When I have navigated difficult times in my life, I have found others that are brave enough to share similar stories on social media to relate to. Through social media I have had the chance to stay in touch with people that were once my neighbours, co-workers and friends that now live in different cities, provinces and countries. 

Less time on social media is always a good answer, I believe. Although, the “bad stuff” on social media doesn’t stay away if you only spend ten minutes a day on it.