Technolandy

Day 183 (of 2025/26) year end reflections on edu social media

https://vancouversun.com/news/bc-parents-cautious-federal-government-bill-restrict-kids-social-media

New Medias always make people uncomfortable. Social media’s in particular have had an impact on the global community faster than any other. And they are ver much ‘new’ in terms of ‘impact’. Though people are completely panicked about the impact they have on our youth… (I do like how people point out there are bad habits being used across all generations)… with the common ‘solution’ being to just ban it… and then hopefully magically at the age of 16, along with a drivers license, youth will magically know how to a/effectively use the media (and the ongoing truth – the medium is the message…) 

This year I spent some time delving into the social medias where much of my learning community spends some time… found some toxic elements (which is why my ally-posts encourage people to send hate my way, not towards kids) and saw how many youth find connection this way… we may wish that they would all find community that accepts them IRL (in real life… yeah, I still think I need to clarify some shorthand) but what do we expect when they don’t… while the online community brings together haters and deniers, it also is where like minded progressives can meet, where people who feel alone because of so many reasons (gender, race, fandoms) find each other. And if we wait until they are 16 for them to find community… I do worry that for too many, that will be too late.

I still believe that the social media platform has great power, and much as we do with most other medias – deserves more teaching than banning. And yes, working/directing with companies so that algorithms act in a more ‘do no harm’ methodology. 

This year I echoed some of my blogs via YouTube, TikTok (I know…) X (I know, I know…) and Instagram.  Some things that surprised me was how some things got big on one platform, but not any other. It was also good to learn that being a content creator.. or specifically being a ‘good’ one, takes time and effort – just like writing and performing, practice and mistakes matter:

YouTube @technolandy

Top Video: See something; say Something: https://youtube.com/shorts/qNc2o_gBfls?feature=share 1400 views

Instagram @ian.landy

Top Video: choice/not a choice: https://youtube.com/shorts/qNc2o_gBfls?feature=share 44.5k views   (often get 200-ish views with some hitting over 1k)

Honourable Mentions: my share of being amazed that the Thagomizer went from a Gary Larson comic to a scientific term got 43.7k https://instagram.com/p/DVpYFhOkYgP/

My take on ‘family dinners being problematic’ got 22.6k https://instagram.com/p/DVuawcOl1-o/

TikTok @ianlandy 

Top Video: showing my custom tie ideation:  https://vt.tiktok.com/ZSCJVDUSb/ (often views get to around 1k

X @technolandy

And the anchor: my daily blog site: technolandy.com (finishing year 13)

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I’m going to let some of the more passionate people fight it out and demonstrate better why some medias need to be banned until a particular birthday magically makes it a rich content area to safely explore… (could you hear my eye roll??) and now I wonder if we should’ve just banned teaching the Dewey decimal system until biology would just make it make sense… ooh, and no teaching decoding language since declaring a birthdate to be the right year that it’ll work and make sense…

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Sure there are negatives to social media – the algorithms are very effective to get one into doom scrolling – with some of the same worries around “too much” that every media faces. People get focused on too much video games but not enough about obsessions on ____ (you know people and media styles… fill in the blank yourself). But there are positives:

News

Sports

Entertainment (very much like poetry…)

Learning from

Demonstrating to others

Community building (for every flat earth group there are more neuro-diversity groups)

Connecting (yep – problems either Roblox that make me yearn for the good old days of Club Penguin – an amazing social media starter tool…

Communicating (vlogspaces) and sharing (bough I guess it’s time to shutter school and pac Facebook instagrams YouTubes et al lest we be hypocrites… )

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Again, more education and less banning is the strategy I’d prefer (unless we also want to talk about tobacco, vapes, alcohol, guns, etc and how those bans have worked so well…)

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Looking to still use social media (chasing the high of #edutwitter and #edchat culture) to augment my 180 days of learning blog (unless we want to ban writing cuz you know… it shows how ideas can be shared… the second iteration of social media… oh, maybe that’s why potlatches et al were banned in our history too – don’t want people to get together and talk unless there’s better supervision…

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Not the same? Talk to me and tell me better. I’ll continue to advocate tech – but the mindset that creating > consuming (but gotta take some in to know what to put out).