With the rapid development of network information, social networking has gradually become an indispensable part of our lives. The diversity of social media enriches our daily life and spiritual world. From last year till now, due to the impact of covid-19, we had to abandon online teaching and learning methods and choose online teaching and work. I studied economics in school. Through this pandemic, I found that social media is gradually replacing traditional teaching and business methods. Social media helps us better integrate the knowledge we have learned with social phenomena or news, and helps us better understand the concepts in books. Through social media, I can also find many bloggers who are very famous or have their own unique styles in the economic field. However, the diversity of social media is also affecting people’s physical and mental health to varying degrees.
First of all, Social media closely connects the theories learned in textbooks with social phenomena or news. When we usually teach or study offline, we rarely notice the influence of social media on our learning. Through this online study, I found that teachers publish instructional videos through social media, which allows many students in different time zones to participate in the video learning, and most of the videos can be played back and adjusted. This is very beneficial for me because English is not my native language. This has greatly improved my learning efficiency. In many classes, there will be a discussion session after the end, and every student is required to participate in the discussion. In this way, the teacher can also get a good understanding of the student’s degree of knowledge. Next, many classes have simple multiple-choice questions for interaction during the classroom process. These all help teachers to better discover students’ doubts and problems in a timely manner. But for teachers, the sudden transition from offline teaching to online teaching caught many teachers by surprise. The way of social media is always a challenge as well as an opportunity for teachers. In Cutri, Mena & Whiting (2020)’s research “ Cindy told a story of teaching synchronously online when she ran into a technical difficulty. She explained to the class that she didn’t know how to fix it. Then, she said that one of her students spoke up and said, ‘Try this Dr. W.’ and proceeded to solve the technical problem. Cindy demonstrated humility and vulnerability by telling the class that she did not know how to resolve the technical problem. Her humility prompted her student to take up the role of being a partner with her in the class.”(p. 531) This example also illustrates that in this social media teaching method, both students and teachers are growing together. When encountering problems beyond their professional fields, students can also become teachers’ learning partners. Social media is also helping teachers improve themselves and expand new areas of knowledge.
Moreover, social media has a very rich and diverse teaching functions. In social media, for example, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and so on. We will find that when you post a new activity, you can choose a label for this activity. These different labels bring together people with authority, traffic or distinctive styles in this field. For instance, when I want to find economic-related videos or news, I will search economics tag directly in the search bar, and then watch the content I want to find one by one. Or, on Twitter, I can focus on authority figures in the economic field, who sometimes publish their views on news in fact. And these views are sometimes helpful to me. Social media provides a wide range of platforms for everyone, but also gives everyone the opportunity to seize business opportunities. Sánchez, Levin, and Del (2012) stated that “Both businesses and individuals view sites like Facebook and Twitter as valuable marketing and communication tools.”(p.68) On Instagram, I sometimes see information about businesses who have successfully combined their products with social media and used unique promotion methods to make the products known or popular. Being able to combine the economic theories I have learned with commodity social media is also something I hope I can try to do in the future. I hope I can also run my own shop through social media.
Finally, Social media is also changing people’s physical and mental health to varying degrees. To some extent, social media can help people who are not good at talking and expressing in real life express their opinions more easily. But at the same time, the widespread use of social media platforms has also raised some issues that cannot be ignored. The issue of privacy leakage on social media can have a great impact on individuals, and it is also one of the factors leading to cyber bullying. Sánchez, Levin, and Del (2012) found that “accounts of employees discrediting themselves and their employers via postings on social networking and media sites have become ubiquitous.”(p.68) Social media has become a battleground for some people to vent their dissatisfaction.They will use social media to vent or spread slander and abuse that does not exist, and use the sympathy of unsuspecting netizens. Make these netizens become their peers unknowingly. But at the same time in the operation of an enterprise, when we submit a personal resume, our personal social information will naturally be revealed in the resume. Some will accidentally leak their personal social information when logging in to Twitter or Facebook through the company’s network when going to work, so that employers will also threaten the personal freedom and privacy of employees. This makes employees feel stressed and worried. For example, Sánchez, Levin, and Del (2012)said “a flight attendant was fired for posting suggestive pictures of herself in her company uniform.”(p.68-69)or “ A high school teacher was dismissed after posting on her Facebook page that she thought residents of the school district were “arrogant and snobby” and that she was “so not looking forward to another year [at the school].”(p.69) These are all negative examples of using social media. Some people will use social media to gain attention, while others will use social media to arouse greater public opinion. However, these are the inevitable negative parts of the rapid development of social media.
Overall, Social media has brought many good or bad changes to our lives, but we can actively use the benefits of social media to learn and improve our own field. We can use social media to make like-minded friends, and we can also use social media to exchange experiences with people from all over the world. At the same time, we must cultivate correct ethics and values to the world. Diversity maintains an attitude of respect and tolerance. Rejecting the occurrence of cyberbullying incidents also firmly cannot become a colleague of cyberbullying.
Citation
Ramona Maile Cutri, Juanjo Mena & Erin Feinauer Whiting (2020) Faculty readiness for online crisis teaching: transitioning to online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic, European Journal of Teacher Education, 43:4, 523-541
Sánchez Abril, P., Levin, A. and Del Riego, A. (2012), Social Media Privacy and the Twenty-First-Century Employee. Am Bus Law J, 49: 63-124.
