Overview

If you’re anything like the average user, you might describe your relationship with social media as complicated. On one hand, your engagement in educational, awareness-raising, social-media groups and communities can have an empowering impact on your life and the world around you. On the other hand, you have witnessed people using social media as a platform for expressing divisive and hateful attitudes that leave you wondering: How can something that is supposed to connect us leave us feeling so disconnected?

The attitudes, beliefs, and values that we convey with our online presence can have a dramatic positive or negative impact on the well-being of ourselves and others. However, when we choose to use social media as a mechanism for improving the human condition, it can transform lives for the better—one post at a time.

Prompt

For this journal activity, you will respond in 3 to 5 sentences to each of the following rubric criteria:

• Describe the implications of using the experiences and outcomes that a person chooses to post about on social media as a measure of your sense of adequacy.
• Describe the implications of using the attitudes and abilities that a person chooses to post about on social media as a confirmation of your own attitudes and abilities.
• Describe the implications of comparing your abilities and outcomes to the abilities and outcomes that others choose to publish about on social media.
• Describe the implications of using reciprocity as a measure of the quality of your relationships with others on social media.
• Describe what type of impression you believe a profile image makes across various platforms (e.g., personal, such as Facebook and Instagram; professional, such as LinkedIn) and why the social media identity you choose to convey matters.
• Describe the ways in which the attitudes, beliefs, and values that are broadcasted on social media can influence others to take constructive action and effect positive change in their lives.

Guidelines for Submission

Submit your completed Module Four journal activity as a Word document. Sources should be cited according to APA style.