Students use social media as part of their learning – to collaborate, explore and share. We asked students last fall about how they use social media for learning, what specific tools they use and what related challenges they are experiencing.
More than 40 percent of students (grades 6-12) told us that not being able to access social media tools at school is a problem for them. Given that more than 75 percent of high school students told us they use YouTube “all the time,” it is clear that not being able to access that tool during school hours must feel like a serious challenge to these learners.
It’s always interesting for us to see which networks are (and are not) being used by students across the country each year. (We look forward to hearing from students again on this topic beginning in October!) After YouTube, the most used social networks, among high school students, are Snapchat and Instagram. The least used? Twitter and Facebook. More than half of high school students told us they “rarely or never” used Twitter and 48 percent said the same of Facebook. The difference is that Twitter usage is increasing among students while Facebook participation has been on a steady decrease since 2007 (35 percent of high school students reported using both networks “often or always” in 2015).
We also asked teachers about the networks they are using. Nearly half of teachers told us they had “pinned” a lesson plan idea (57 percent of first-year teachers said the same).
Check out our latest infographic, Social Media Use In and Out of School, for more, including the fact that 55 percent of parents say they want to receive text messages from their child’s teacher or school – up from just 5 percent in 2010!