Positive and Negative Effects of Social Media

Essential question

What motivates adolescents to use social media?

Learning intention

Understand the potential motivations for using social media and their positive and negative effects.

Lesson vocabulary

Motivation - the reason or reasons one has for acting or behaving in a particular way

Lesson materials

Lesson slides
Internet-connected devices for students (alternative activities are suggested if such devices are not available for students in class)
Motivation T-Chart (digital or physical copies)
Personal Seesaw (digital or physical copies)

Lesson standards

CDC National Health Standards for Middle School
1.8.1 Analyze the relationship between healthy behaviors and personal health.
1.8.2 Describe the interrelationships of emotional, intellectual, physical, and social health in adolescence.
2.8.6 Analyze the influence of technology on personal and family health.

Florida Health Education Standards for Middle School
HE.6 C.1.2, C.1.4, C.1.8, C.2.5, C.2.6, C.2.9, B.5.1, B.5.2, B.5.3, B.5.5, B.6.2, P.7.1, P.7.2
HE.7 C.1.1, C.1.2, C.1.4, C.1.8, C.2.5, C.2.9, B.5.1, B.5.2, B.5.5, B.6.1, B.6.2, P.7.1, P.7.2
HE.8 C.1.2, C.1.4, C.1.8, C.2.6, C.2.9, B.5.1, B.5.2, B.5.3, B.5.5, B.6.1, B.6.2, P.7.1, P.7.2

Lesson plan

Introduction & vocabulary (~1 minute)
Say: Today we’re going to discuss our motivations for using social media.

Review the vocabulary word motivation.

Engage (~10 minutes)
Ask: Why do you use social media? Can you pinpoint the motivation behind your WHY?

Compile a list so the class can see the responses. Guide them to try to pinpoint the motivation behind their responses.

Example: “I use social media to browse the internet for funny videos. The motivation is to laugh and be entertained.”

Motivation activity (~20 minutes)
Break the class into groups. Randomly assign each group a motivation: 1. Connection 2. Expression 3. Exploration 4. Browsing.

Using the Motivation T-Chart, brainstorm a minimum of three positive and three negative effects for each heading. (Students can complete this directly in their Google Doc copies or on paper if internet connected devices are not available.)

Have each group present their ideas to the class.

Potential answers for each heading may include the following:

1. Connection

a. Positive: communicating with family members and friends, sharing pictures with family and friends, feeling closer to family and friends

b. Negative: Feeling isolated, sharing inappropriate content with friends, viewing inappropriate content.

2. Expression

a. Positive: Meeting others with same interests and ideas, voice opinions, getting positive feedback on what you share

b. Negative: Feeling judged by peers, worrying about being judged, unable to be yourself, cyberbullying,

3. Exploration

a. Positive: Engage in topics of interest, learn things you otherwise would not have found, feeling inspired

b. Negative: Overwhelmed by amount of content, distracted by freedom to search, lose track of time

4. Browsing

a. Positive: Entertainment, wide range of options for browsing, keeping up with what’s going on with friends or celebrities

b. Negative: Waste time, getting caught up in drama, getting bored

Social media seesaw (~5 minutes)
Say: We can think of social media like a seesaw. For each of the motivations that drives us to use it, there are positive and negative outcomes. It is important to be mindful of this and find balance as we engage in social media use.

If seesaw was not already presented in Module #3, review each row with students as needed.

Say: Many teens report positive effects from social media, as shown in these survey results.

Review Pew Research survey statistics with students.

Say: But many of those same teens report negative effects from social media too, as shown in this graph.

Review Pew Research survey statistics with students.

Exit activity (~14 minutes)
Instruct students to choose one motivation that drives them to use social media and complete the personal seesaw activity. (Students can complete this directly in their Google Doc copies or on paper if internet connected devices are not available.)

Instructions: Choose one motivation that drives you to use social media. Write it on the line below the seesaw.

List the positive and negative influences on each end of the seesaw.

Brainstorm ways you can balance the influences. List your responses above the word “balance” in the middle of the seesaw. Share with your neighbor.

Essential question

How does connecting through technology affect well-being?

Learning intention

Evaluate information about the positive and negative effects of online interactions.

Lesson vocabulary

Correlation - a relationship between two or more things

Positive correlation - two things move together in the same direction
Negative correlation - two things move together in the opposite direction

Causation - a relationship between two or more things where one thing causes another thing or other things to occur
Social comparison - comparing yourself to other people to evaluate yourself or determine your self-worth
Depression - a mental health disorder in which people feel sad and do not enjoy things for prolonged periods of time

Lesson materials

Lesson slides

Lesson standards

CDC National Health Standards for Middle School
1.8.1 Analyze the relationship between healthy behaviors and personal health.
1.8.2 Describe the interrelationships of emotional, intellectual, physical, and social health in adolescence.
1.8.5 Describe ways to reduce or prevent injuries and other adolescent health problems.
1.8.8 Examine the likelihood of injury or illness if engaging in unhealthy behaviors.
2.8.6 Analyze the influence of technology on personal and family health.

Florida Health Education Standards for Middle School
HE.6 C.1.2, C.1.4, C.1.8, C.2.2, C.2.5, C.2.6, C.2.9, B.5.1, B.5.2, B.5.3, B.5.5, B.6.2, P.7.1, P.7.2
HE.7 C.1.1, C.1.2, C.1.4, C.1.8, C.2.2, C.2.5, C.2.9, B.5.1, B.5.2, B.5.5, B.6.1, B.6.2, P.7.1, P.7.2
HE.8 C.1.2, C.1.4, C.1.8, C.2.2, C.2.6, C.2.9, B.5.1, B.5.2, B.5.3, B.5.5, B.6.1, B.6.2, P.7.1, P.7.2

Lesson plan

Introduction (~2 minutes)
Show slides with headlines about social media and mental health.

Say: Being able to connect with family and friends through technology can be convenient and necessary. There have been alarmist headlines that say social media is bad for your mental health, that it makes people feel sad and lonely.

Say: But other headlines push back and say that social media use does not harm people. How can we tell what to believe? Today, we are going to explore how technology makes you feel while using it and learn about what research has shown about how technology use relates to mental health.

Engage (~8 minutes)
Ask students how they feel when using technology or social media. Record their responses on the board.

Data dive (~36 minutes)
Show students the slide plotting screen time against happiness and well-being.

Say: These graphs show data from large surveys of teens in the U.S. (left) and the U.K. (right). They both show the relationship between happiness or well-being (vertical axes) and time spent using digital media and screens.

What relationships do you notice?

Guide students to noticing that increased screen time is generally associated with decreased happiness/well-being.

Review vocabulary words correlation, positive correlation, and negative correlation.

Ask students if the graphs show positive correlations or negative correlations. Guide them to noting that the correlations are negative.

Say: These graphs largely show negative correlations: After the first hour of screen time, as screen time increases, happiness/well-being decreases. This is a negative correlation because the two things are moving together in opposite directions, and the line on the graphs is going down.

However, this does not necessarily mean that increased screen time causes decreased happiness or decreased well-being.

Review vocabulary word causation.

Say: It could be the case that increased screen time causes people to feel less happy. But it could also be the case that being unhappy causes people to use their phones more. Or it could be something else entirely that causes screen time to increase and happiness to decrease.

Ask students to brainstorm reasons for each of the potential explanations for the negative correlation between screen time and happiness.

As students if they notice another pattern in the data. Guide them to noticing that a little bit of screen time (going from 0 to 1 hr) is associated with increased happiness and well-being.

Explain that there appears to be a “Goldilocks” effect where there’s a “just right” amount of social media use to increase happiness (like the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears). Ask students why they think this is.

Guide students to noting that some social media/technology use can be beneficial, like helping people feel more connected to each other. Then remind students that too much social media/technology use is associated with feeling worse.

Say: Some of our behaviors on social media can lead us to feel worse about ourselves. One example behavior is social comparison.

Review vocabulary word social comparison.

Ask students to give examples of how they engage in social comparison online.

Say: Too much social comparison has been associated with symptoms of depression.

Review vocabulary word depression.

Ask students why they think social comparison can lead to depression.

Say: Researchers have examined how online social comparison is related to feelings of depression. They asked teens how often they engage in online social comparison [left text] and how often they experienced symptoms of depression.

This graph shows the relationship between online social comparison (horizontal axis) and symptoms of depression (vertical axis). Is this a positive correlation or a negative correlation?

Guide students to noting that it is a positive correlation.

Say: This is a positive correlation because both variables move in the same direction: As online social comparison increases, symptoms of depression increase.

What do you notice about the difference between male and female teens?

Guide students to noticing that the positive correlation is stronger for female students compared to male students. A small increase in social comparison for females is associated with a bigger increase in depression.

Ask: Why do you think the association between social comparison and depression symptoms is stronger for female teens than male teens?

Say: The researchers also found that the positive correlation between online social comparison and depression symptoms varied by popularity. It was the strongest for teens who were the least popular. This means that increasing social comparison was associated with the biggest increases in depression for the least popular teens.

Why do you think the association between social comparison and depression symptoms is strongest for the least popular teens?

Exit slip (~4 minutes)
Ask students to consider their social media use. They should write down one thing that makes them feel better, one thing that makes them feel worse, and an idea for stopping or reducing the behavior that makes them feel worse.

Essential question

What is cyberbullying, and how can it impact adolescents?

Learning intention

Identify cyberbullying as a negative form of social media use.

Lesson vocabulary

Bullying - when someone intentionally and repeatedly causes another person harm
Cyberbullying - bullying that occurs electronically

Lesson materials

Lesson slides
Chart paper & markers
Bits of paper or notecards & bowl to hold them in

Lesson standards

CDC National Health Standards for Middle School
2.8.3 Describe how peers influence healthy and unhealthy behaviors.
2.8.6 Analyze the influence of technology on personal and family health.
4.8.3 Demonstrate effective conflict management or resolution strategies.
4.8.4 Demonstrate how to ask for assistance to enhance the health of self and others.

Florida Health Education Standards for Middle School
HE.6 C.1.2, C.1.4, C.1.8, C.2.2, C.2.5, C.2.6, C.2.8, C.2.9, B.4.1, B.4.2, B.4.3, B.4.4, B.5.1, B.5.2, B.5.3, B.5.5, B.6.2, P.7.1
HE.7 C.1.1, C.1.2, C.1.4, C.1.8, C.2.2, C.2.5, C.2.8, C.2.9, B.4.1, B.4.2, B.4.3, B.4.4, B.5.1, B.5.2, B.5.5, B.6.1, B.6.2, P.7.1
HE.8 C.1.2, C.1.4, C.1.8, C.2.2, C.2.6, C.2.8, C.2.9, B.4.1, B.4.3, B.5.1, B.5.2, B.5.3, B.5.5, B.6.1, B.6.2, P.7.1

Lesson plan

Introduction (~10 minutes)
Break students into small groups and give each group a sheet of chart paper to make an anchor chart. Ask them to brainstorm ways that adolescents might express themselves on social media and write their responses down on the left side of the anchor chart.

Then, ask students to come up with ways bullies may target a person who has expressed themselves on social media. Have them write down their responses on the right side of the anchor chart.

For example, “People post videos of themselves dancing.” and “Bullies would leave mean comments on their videos.”

Cyberbullying video (~9 minutes)
Play cyberbullying video for students without telling them ahead of time that it is a video about cyberbullying.

After the video, ask students the following questions:

1. How do you think the boy felt?

2. What do you feel the physical injuries represent?

3. Do you think the boy felt hurt in other ways? Explain.

Review vocabulary words bullying and cyberbullying.

Cyberbullying experiences (~10 minutes)
Ask students to write down a time when they witnessed or experienced cyberbullying. Place all papers in a bowl and draw some to read out loud as time allows.

Say: Most U.S. teens — nearly 60% — have experienced some form of cyberbullying, as shown in this graph.

Highlight specific rows in the graph as you see fit, drawing links to the students’ experiences you recently read aloud.

Witnessing and addressing cyberbullying (~21 minutes)
Say: Being cyberbullied feels bad. Witnessing someone else get cyberbullied feels bad too.

Watch UNC video. If time allows, can pause the video to discuss the prompt at 2:22.

Ask students to share some ways to address cyberbullying. Then present the ways listed on the slide

Watch video about bullying and being an upstander.

Ask students to think about a time when they experienced or witnessed cyberbullying and discuss what an upstander would do in that situation.

Say: Here’s what the teens in the survey said about the effects of social media on people their age.

Note whether this fit how students voted.

Invite students to discuss the reasoning behind their votes. If students are still in line to show their votes, they can turn and talk to their neighbors before a class-wide discussion.

Brainstorm & discuss (~15 minutes)
Ask students to make lists of positive and negative effects of connecting over social media.

Read through the examples of positive and negative effects on the slide and ask students to share their own examples.

Activity (~6 minutes)
Show students the social media seesaw.

Say: We can think of social media like a seesaw. There are lots of ways and reasons to use social media, as shown by the rows in the image: To have social interactions, for self-expression, exploration, social browsing, and general content browsing. Each of these ways can have positive effects and negative effects.

For example, today we discussed how using social media for social interactions can have positive and negative effects. Positive effects include feeling more connected to friends, and negative effects include feeling more disconnected and more isolated.

Instruct students to pick one of the other reasons to use social media (one of the rows) and, using their own experiences, write down a time when they felt one of the positive effects and one of the negative effects of that reason. If time, have students share their examples.

Wrap up (~4 minutes)
Ask students to create IF, THEN, BECAUSE statements about social media interactions.

If time, ask a few students to share their statements after they are done.

Essential question

How can social media affect adolescents’ body image?

Learning intention

Define body image and explain how it is affected by media and social media.

Lesson vocabulary

Body image - one’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors towards one’s body
Body dissatisfaction - unhappiness with one’s body; often connected to eating disorders, low self-esteem, and depression

Lesson materials

Lesson slides
Internet-connected devices for students (alternative activities are suggested if such devices are not available for students in class)Physical collage supplies (newspapers, magazines, scissors, glue/tape, markers)

Lesson standards

CDC National Health Standards for Middle School
1.8.1 Analyze the relationship between healthy behaviors and personal health.
1.8.2 Describe the interrelationships of emotional, intellectual, physical, and social health in adolescence.
1.8.5 Describe ways to reduce or prevent injuries and other adolescent health problems.
2.8.3 Describe how peers influence healthy and unhealthy behaviors.
2.8.6 Analyze the influence of technology on personal and family health.

Florida Health Education Standards for Middle School
HE.6 C.1.2, C.1.4, C.2.5, C.2.6, C.2.9, B.5.1, B.5.2, B.5.3, B.5.5, B.6.2, P.7.1, P.7.2
HE.7 C.1.1, C.1.2, C.1.4, C.2.5, C.2.9, B.5.1, B.5.2, B.5.5, B.6.1, B.6.2, P.7.1, P.7.2
HE.8 C.1.2, C.1.4, C.2.6, C.2.8, C.2.9, B.5.1, B.5.2, B.5.3, B.5.5, B.6.1, B.6.2, P.7.1, P.7.2

Lesson plan

Introduction & vocabulary (~5 minutes)
Ask: What does the term body image mean to you? Have students write their answers to this question.

Review the vocabulary words body image and body dissatisfaction. You may want to point out that body image can be positive, negative, neutral, or some mix of all of the above, whereas body dissatisfaction is specifically negative.

Collage activity (~20 minutes)
Ask students to spend 10 minutes gathering images of what influences their body image to make a collage. Students with individual internet-connected devices can pull images from websites and image searches. Students without individual internet-connected devices can cut photos from newspapers and magazines or draw/list influences.

Students should sort the images into those that make them feel more body acceptance versus more body dissatisfaction.

When students have completed their collages, spend ~10 minutes sharing out. Point out how much of what influences their body image comes from traditional media and social media.

Media influences (~10 minutes)
Say: How does the media that you’re exposed to influence your body image? Here’s one example from the island nation of Fiji. They did not have television until 1995. When television was introduced, they saw images from Western media of mostly white, thin women. How do you think this affected the body image of people in Fiji?

Ask students to share out.

Say: Here is what one Fijian teen girl said when asked, “Do you think that television is making Fijians ashamed of their bodies?” A number of Fijian teens reported similar feelings of greater body dissatisfaction after being exposed to Western ideas of beauty—usually thin women—on television.

Say: Now let’s consider an example that you may have experienced. Instagram was invented in 2010, which allowed teens to see filtered, edited, and idealized images of people. How do you think that affects the body image of Instagram users?

Ask students to share out.

Review the study findings on the slide. If Module 4, Lesson 2 was used, students can be reminded that correlation is not causation. Research suggests that social media use causes worse body image, but also that worse body image can prompt more social media use.

Healthy body image (~9 minutes)
Ask students to brainstorm what they can do to improve their own body image. Students can first discuss in small groups before sharing out to the class.

Ask students if they have heard of the Body Positivity movement and for a volunteer to share what the movement is. If needed, say: The Body Positivity movement, or hashtag BoPo, is a way for people to share images on social media representing a variety of different bodies in order to promote positive feelings about all kinds of bodies.

Take a thumbs up/thumbs down vote: Do you think #BoPo makes people feel better (thumbs up) or worse (thumbs down) about their bodies?

Say: Research has shown that young women report higher appreciation of their own bodies after viewing Body Positive social media posts. How do you think viewing Body Positive images boosts body image?

Ask students to share out.

Exit slip (~6 minutes)
Watch the 3 minute video summarizing social media and body image. Then ask students to write down 2 things that stuck with them and 1 change they can make to their own (social) media habits to improve their body image.

Remind students that there are many resources available if they are struggling with body image and/or eating disorders. If your school/institution offers additional resources (e.g. a school counselor), please add them to the slide.