Being Social /31 #SOL2024

I started teaching a grade 11 course called Media Studies at my first school in 1999. Back then, students talked about Live journal and Facebook until the adults started showing up and they moved on to other social media platforms. This move away from popular social trends appears in a PBS documentary called “The Merchants of Cool”. In the documentary Douglas Rushkoff talks about the social phenomenon with youth: he says that “cool hunting” kills what it finds. As soon as “cool” becomes mainstream, the youth move on to find something unique.

We didn’t have social media when I was in high school. I don’t remember being that social either, though I did have a small group of close friends, some who attended other high schools in my area of Toronto. I’m quite sure that I was not one of the “cool kids” preferring to be invisible as I just made it through what I saw as the hellscape of high school.

Though I might not be “cool” and possibly not that social, I am curious and have a tendency to immerse myself in research and experience. So, when I started teaching the media course, I knew that I would need to familiarize myself with the social media landscape of my students to some degree. How can I critique from the sidelines? Cell phones started appearing in the classroom, and I signed up for Twitter viewing it like an experiment.

At one school, I followed the lead of a UK teacher and had my grade 10 students participate in “Such Tweet Sorrow” while reading Romeo and Juliet.

After that, I moved on to partner with VoicEd Radio and grade 10 students used Twitter for research on a chosen topic (they made connections with scholars and experts) and then they shared the experience once a week on a podcast with Stephen Hurley.

I tried one last experience with Twitter attempting to connect students with Indigenous knowledge keepers, but by then, the trolls had taken over. I decided that Twitter was no longer a productive platform for the classroom.

Nonetheless, I personally learned a great deal from my years on Twitter before it became X. Teachers generously shared lessons and debates emerged around pedagogy and practice. I followed writers and poets, academics and thought leaders, whose influence changed me. But, as I withdrew from the space, I couldn’t help but remember this phenomenon of the popular and capitalism “killing what it finds”.

When it comes to being on social media, I feel a bit like I’m free falling, or maybe in limbo stuck between apps without meaning or purpose: Threads? Blue sky? Intagram? X? Medium? Substack? Being social doesn’t mean just being there, but for now, I’m not sure what that means.