are we really social with social media?

Today’s children of “Z Generation” who are also called “digital natives” are growing up in online media environments, which contains social networks, gaming, sharing videos and text messages.

According to survey which was conducted by TUIK (2018) in order to determine the purpose of personal usage of internet on last three months in our country, the percentage of those who use internet for "social networks" was for males 86.9%, for females 80.7% and for totally 84.1%. Also, according to “Digital in 2018 report” (WeAreSocial), Turkey is the first country in Europa with 2 hours 48 minutes average of social media daily usage. This average is increasing each year when analysing previous reports.

In line of those data, we wanted to know our situation in our school and applied training needs analysis with Delphi technique. Also, we had semi-structured interviews with students and staff. Finally, we reached parallel results (85.3%) with data mentioned above.

Nowadays, individuals use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Whatsapp etc. to communicate with each other while they are even sitting in the same environment. Here is a double-edge sword: even though this sites and digital tools offer new portals for entertainment, communication, education, social interaction, on the other hand, it should be considered that their unbounded engagement with digital media has also raised serious issues.

For this reason, it has been witnessed that the exponentially increase of researches which are conducted on excessive use of social media and its addiction. According to these studies results, excessive use of social media cause depression (Koc and Gulyagci, 2013; Wegmann et al., 2015), social anxiety (Bodroža and Jovanović, 2016), less life satisfaction (Kross, 2013), less self-esteem (Andreassena and Griffiths, 2017), social isolated (Primack, 2017), low academic performance (Kuss and Griffiths, 2011), mental health problems (Udorie, 2015), addiction and cyberbullying.

The results of these researches and the problems that we encounter in school environment have motivated us for this project and we believe that these findings must be considered. All of these don’t mean that there are no benefits of social media, but as can be seen in the results of the researches, it is obvious that pros and cons of this issue must be examined.

In a large study which was conducted with more than 89,000 individuals in 31 countries has found that some 6% of people on the planet suffer from Internet addiction (Cheng and Li, 2014). Furthermore, it seems that is a global problem when examined the researches on social media. So, as stressed by above, this project should be funded and carried out transnationally for producing best solutions and exchanging good practices about issue.

Precisely at this point, our motivation for our project is parents, educators and students who don't have awareness about the disadvantages and nature of social media sites which are not entirely suitable for them.

general objectives
1. To create awareness about excessive and misuse of social media in target groups
2. To improve digital competences of target groups