Side Quest – Social Media

Introduction

If used correctly, social media can be a great tool for good. However, social media has many negative aspects to it too – due to its highly addictive nature and our desire to present our lives as perfect, many dangers await us on our phones on a daily basis.

By being more ethical with our smartphone use, by applying more honesty and consideration to our posts, we can have a more happy and healthy relationship with our phones.

The challenges below will ask you to consider how you use your smartphone and social media – so that you can use your phone how you’d like to, rather than it using you.

Challenge 2

One of the most damaging aspects of social media, for both individuals and for society, is that what’s posted is very often not the truth. We learnt about the importance of truth-telling in Quest 6, and here we apply that learning to social media. Watch the following video and complete the exercise under the Materials Tab.

Challenge 3a: Competition

Now that you’ve reflected on truth-telling in social media, it’s time to consider why people would lie: often if we don’t feel great, we try to make ourselves feel better by being better than someone else.

Competition is important, in particular in sport. When competition encourages us to do better it’s known as healthy competition. Unhealthy competition arises when we wish for our opponents to fail, or we want to win without working for it.

In life, the only person we should ever compete against is the person we were yesterday. And by helping others, we are more likely to receive help ourselves at some point.

We’ll learn more about helping others in the next quest, but for now, take a look at this video about competition, and complete the accompanying quiz.

Challenge 3b:

Finally, take a look at these teens and how they use their phones and social media. How do you use yours?