Has the Time Come for Educators to Bring Social Media into the Classroom?

(For a video companion to this article, click here.)

Introduction

This is a topic that has become near and dear to me. Over the majority of my life, including that as an educator, I have been a technological troglodyte shunning digital media in all its forms and sticking to an analogue life and classroom. In fact, I might have been better described as a technological ostrich, ignoring the era of apps, social media, and AI until they had proliferated our world so much that I could not ignore them any longer. Even during the COVID era, I walked away thinking that the pandemic had shown us some nice tools such as Zoom, Kahoot, NearPod, and Pear Deck but only to serve as tools to be used in an analogue classroom.

Then I hit a mid career wall and realized that I was driving a Model T on the interstate. Suddenly I discovered how useful AI could be not only in drafting communication and schedules but also helping to construct intervention goals, generate social stories, and even identify specific, research-based academic and behavioral interventions. Once I had taken this step, I decided to take the full plunge into educational technology and have now launched an entire digital platform including developing a professional website (that I manually indexed with Google), creating a series of videos on YouTube and reels on Instagram, using Pinterest to serve as a visual index of my work, and becoming an active contributor to Medium, Substack, Reddit, and LinkedIn, while showcasing all of this through X. 

Launching this project has been intense but also exhilarating as it has helped me better understand the technology that our students are using every day. I have stumbled upon some of the inherent risks of social media (the occasional scammer on Instagram reaching out to “pay my ransom” or the mob mentality of a very angry group of Redditors who have at times found my posts to be “out of touch” or even “spammy.” More than once my feelings have been hurt, but I have also gained knowledge to the internet culture unique to each platform that our students expose themselves to every day (I must say that I find myself more akin to the polite, intellectually curious crowds of Medium and Substack, but Redditors and LinkedIn users can be a lot of fun too). 

Not only have I discovered the appeal of these platforms, but I have also seen the educational opportunities as well. Before going any further, I want to make it very clear that none of the apps that I am about to discuss are new, nor am I the first educator to explore using them for educational purposes. At the same time, I also want to note that education as a field is paradoxically under constant pressure to change while being resistant to it. In fact:

Academics tend to utilize these platforms more for networking, research dissemination, and professional development rather than for instructional purposes, reflecting a disconnect between availability and effective classroom integration. The literature further identifies several barriers to implementation. Key challenges include limited digital literacy, inadequate institutional support, cultural resistance, and concerns related to privacy, copyright, and data control. (Manca & Ranieri, 2016, as cited in IJCRT, 2026)

My hope is through writing this article (and sharing a bit of my own personal experience using these platforms), I can help offer curious or even resistant educators one path for utilizing these resources in a meaningful way. 

I also want to stress that social media is not a fad. It has become as ingrained in the current generation of students as drive-in movie theatres, rock n’ roll, hip hop, roller rinks, and shopping malls were for past generations. In fact, today’s youth (particularly in urban areas) not only consume but produce social media content through various platforms to both connect with others and create narratives of their lives and experiences (ResearchGate, 2026). Thus, social media is not just a hobby but a key component of many students’ identities. By becoming more familiar with these tools, teachers will not only be making the curriculum more accessible to students but also connecting with them on a deeper level through teaching them how to utilize their social media skills in a meaningful and cognitively rigorous way. 

Platform 1: Instagram

Out of the three platforms discussed in this article, Instagram might be the most versatile. Often viewed as a platform for images, the site has evolved into a place for developing learning guides, conducting live broadcasts, creating both short and long videos, developing collaborative posts, and posting visuals to a shared folder. Cendrero-Ramos and Valverde-Berrocoso (2024) write:

Instagram facilitate[s] collaboration, access to learning, and content creation, becoming essential tools for the development of students and future educators in digital environments. Its visual nature and ease of use make it a novel resource for education…facilitating the connection between skills developed in the classroom and literacy practices applied in real contexts. (p. 149)

Using these tools, students can create visual journals and learning resources for all core subjects. Examples include: 

• Creating science experiments live and showcasing the data
• Writing digital book reports
• Showcasing virtual museums about historical events
• Presenting mathematical study guides. 
• 
  

The possibilities are as endless as the creativity of educators and students.

Platform 2: Pinterest

While Pinterest has traditionally been treated as a platform for showcasing visuals, educators can more effectivel use it for  its potential for students to both receive and disseminate information. Regarding the former, they can essentially treat Pinterest as a large visual search engine. Students can type in key terms for a topic they might be researching and then discover numerous visual aids and resources to better understand that topic. Furthermore, many of the images have links to websites that might provide additional information, essentially serving as a visual bibliography. 

To give you an example, I decided on a whim to research solar energy. Within seconds of entering the term “Solar Energy” into the search bar, I had access to various diagrams, animations, and boards (specific pages with images relating to a single topic) focused around explaining how solar energy works. From there I was able to navigate to several established websites providing additional information about the subject. 

Pinterest, however, also provides ways for students to showcase learning as well. Perhaps the most common way is through producing boards about specific concepts as well as creating subsections within that board. Going back to the example of solar energy as a topic, students can create or find specific images regarding this topic and “pin” it to a collective board. They could also create subsections about solar power including “solar panels,” “solar power infrastructure,” and “the mechanics of solar energy” within that board with specific pictures, diagrams, and animations to explain the topic. 

One essential aspect of using Pinterest as a learning tool is that students are able to use collaboration to develop a shared visual language with their peers. Huntington (2022) notes, “Results suggest Pinterest enhances students' sense of learning through contributing to enjoyment, sense of community, and perceived collaborative learning. These results support the utility of Pinterest-oriented discussions to foster collaboration and learning in online digital advertising and media courses” (p. 64). Much like the group projects involving creating posters and trifolds of yesterday, today students can utilize Pinterest to develop similar skills but with greater flexibility and visual options. 

Platform 3: YouTube

Out of all of the digital platforms, YouTube is most likely the most familiar for educators. Since its inception in the mid 2000s (a full 10 years before the birth of most current K-12 students), the website has been one of the most accessed in the world. While most take on the role of passive viewer when interacting with it, there is a growing population that is finding ways to actively engage with it.

As an educational tool teachers regularly use it to screen educational resources for students, and an additional number of educators have had students create video projects using it. With the increase of easy to use video editing tools, students have been able to create increasingly sophisticated videos with special effects that allow for a greater degree of flexibility in how they present their learning. In addition to this, YouTube now has features that allows students to:

• Poll their viewers
• Develop video quizzes and formative assessments,
• Create timestamps to structure their video by main ideas and supporting details 
• Compile community playlists that serve as resource libraries

All of these features allow students to receive and engage content in profoundly different ways. The International Journal for Multidisciplinary Research (2025) has found:

YouTube’s interactive features, accessibility, and aesthetic appeal make it a more attractive educational resource for the pupil as well as it makes the complex concepts easier to understand. The more we use sensory organs the more we understand the abstract concepts which results in improved learning outcome…Research indicates that interactive and multimedia-based teaching methods can significantly enhance student engagement and comprehension. 

In creating assignments of this nature, students are able to engage with abstract concepts in a more concrete and accessible way. Students are currently large consumers of digital media, and allowing them digital ways to demonstrate understanding strengthens both content and media skills.

Next Steps

One valid concern that has kept many educators wary of using social media in the classroom has been safety. Earlier in this article I even mentioned my own experiences with scammers and public criticism (and to be honest, mine were quite tame compared to what many children and young adults experience every day). My counter to this, however, is that the best remedy is for educators to be more familiar and engaged with social media, not less. By utilizing this technology, teachers can create the conditions necessary for these platforms to be safely used in the classroom. Furthermore, they will gain a better understanding of how the platforms work enabling them to explicitly teach online safety, including awareness of online predators and bullying. 

The Information Age has created a number of changes in education; since its inception in the 1940s personal computers, the Internet, and mobile technology have all had major impacts on how educators teach and students learn. Social media has only grown in influence since its inception, evolving static Facebook and MySpace profiles to dynamic apps that literally travel with the user wherever they go. Just as it has reshaped the way that students live, it must also help guide the direction of education so that the next generation of students are media literate and able to use these resources in a constructive and informed way. 

References

Cendrero-Ramos, J. P., & Valverde-Berrocoso, J. (2024). Use of Instagram as an educational tool with pre-service teachers and the impact on digital competence in communication and collaboration. Education Sciences, 15(2), 149.

Huntington, H. E. (2022). Find, pin, discuss: Incorporating Pinterest to foster community and collaboration in online advertising classes. Journal of Advertising Education, 26(1), 64–73. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1338151

IJCRT. (2026). Teachers' perspectives on integrating social media in higher education and its impact on student learning. International Journal of Creative Research Thoughts (IJCRT), 14(4), 350-358. https://www.ijcrt.org/papers/IJCRT2604350.pdf

IJFMR. (2025). A study on the effectiveness of YouTube as an educational tool amongst the students of higher educational institutions. International Journal for Multidisciplinary Research, 7(5). https://www.ijfmr.com/papers/2025/5/56303.pdf



ResearchGate. (2026). Social MEDIA influence on youth identity formation in urban communities. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/399222428_Social_MEDIA_Influence_on_Youth_Identity_Formation_in_Urban_Communities