This is Your Brain on Snapchat

Do you spend a lot of time on Facebook? Do your students spend every spare minute on Snapchat? Have you wondered how this affects your mood or your students' moods? If so, KQED and PBS Learning Media have a resource that you should share with your students.

How Do Different Social Media Platforms Affect Your Mood? is a video produced by KQED. The five minute video explains the findings of some research on the correlations between social media use and moods. The correlation between mood and social media use is also explained. The video correctly points out that correlation is not necessarily indicative of causation.


Applications for Education
PBS Learning Media offers a free viewing guide to distribute to your students. The viewing guide is a set of questions that serve two purposes. First, they serve the purpose of asking students to pay attention and take notes while watching the video. Second, some of the questions are designed to prompt students to reflect on their own social media use.

Please note that there is some language in the video that may be objectionable to some students and to some teachers. I would not show the video to students younger than high school age.

Snapchat Explained by Students to Teachers

Jenn Scheffer and her students at Burlington Public High School run a great tech help desk blog for teachers and students. This week they tackled an app that is still a mystery to many educators, Snapchat. I encourage any teacher, administrator, librarian, or parent who doesn't understand Snapchat to take some time to read the BPHS Help Desk blog post about Snapchat and watch the video overview of how it works.