Resources for Critical Thinking About Social Media

Compiled by Preston Stovall and Bonnie Sheehey
Spring 2022

Background Information

Threats to Free Inquiry and Open Communication

• Haidt et al.'s big document
• A shorter version
• Social media use and political polarization
• Is social media driving political polarization?
  • Good caveats on what the data suggests; Includes discussion of actively open-minded thinking (AOT) as a way of decreasing polarization
• Good counterpoint to some of my stuff on free speech under threat in academia 
• Same author, good data on UNC and where people are; seems only a small percentage are censorious, but UNC has had some interventions
• Education as a public resource for addressing American political polarization
• The problem may be localized to elite colleges; colleges with working-class and first-generation students may be different

Social Media Use and Mental Health in Adolescents

• A great conversation between Malcolm Gladwell, Lenore Skenazy, Jonathan Haidt, and Greg Lukianoff, from 2019. Summarizes trends, what’s been happening with social media
• Better social media
• Facebook's dangerous experiement on teen girls
• Crisis in American girlhood
• The Facebook files
• Kids are staring at screens all day
• Social Media and Mental Health: A Collaborative Review
• Social Media: Jonathan Haidt
• How Social Media Drives Polarization
• Jonathan Haidt Twitter feed
• Screens, Teens, and Psychological Well-Being
• What is Cyberbullying?
• Pew Research Center: Majority of teens have experienced cyberbullying
• Podcast: The link between social media and mental health
• Podcast: Is social media good for mental health?
• Podcast: Effects of social media on mental health

Ethics of AI

• Podcast: Machine Ethics
• The AI Ethics Challenge
• How AI facial recognition works
• Law and Ethics of AI
• Are you a robot?
• The Technically Human Podcast
• Ethics in Information Technology
• Practical guide to building ethical AI
• Ethics and AI
• Information Ethics and Equity Institute
• Data & Society Research
• The Ethics of Autonomous Cars

Effective Interventions and School Resources

Teaching Kids Resilience

• Antifragility: coined by Nassim Taleb
• Free-range children
• Lenore Skenazy's program on Free Ranch Kids
• Haidt and cognitive behavioral therapy
• Stop bullying tips for teachers

Media Literacy

• National Media Literacy Alliance (lots of organizations involved)
• Center for News Literacy at Stony Brook University 
  • Lots of resources
• “Students are confused about how to evaluate online information. We all are. The COR curriculum provides free lessons and assessments that help you teach students to evaluate online information that affects them, their communities, and the world.”
• “The News Literacy Project, a nonpartisan national education nonprofit, provides 
  programs and resources for educators and the public to teach, learn and share the abilities needed to be smart, active consumers of news and information and equal and engaged participants in a democracy.”
• Looking at effective media literacy education, with focus on diversity, equity, etc.

Critical Thinking and Argument Mapping

• A general program, big US/UK program to use new media for teaching, and teaching 
  media literacy
• Designing high school critical thinking course
• A discussion-based introduction to arguments and their structures
• For creating arguments with reasoned conclusions
• For identifying some classical valid argument forms

Philosophical Inquiry

• Lesson plans around topics in philosophy
• Philosophy toolkit
• Lots of resources
• For collaboratively generating questions
• Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog
• Classroom policies for free expression

Civic Engagement

• “Students doing civic engagement projects in their philosophy classes commit to making changes in their communities. The projects help students apply philosophical concepts to real-world issues and real-world experience to philosophical concepts.” 

Methods

• Thinking Matters, uses metacognition as a pedagogical framework
  • Organizations that work with them
• Thinking Schools International, David Hyerle, works on media literacy

Non-profits That Organize Discussion Groups

• Catherine Project
• Night School Bar
• Premise Institute
• Humanities are thriving on Zoom
• Helena-based Merlin

Teachers, Parents, and Administrators

• Studies what students look for, and can get, out of college
• Lots of advice, strategy, and links for teachers and administrators
• Good resources in the citations of this blog post