THERE IS LIFE BEYOND SOCİAL MEDİA

THERE IS LIFE BEYOND SOCİAL MEDİA
In today's world, social media takes a big part in people's lives. The diversity and accessibility of social media platforms cause people to become addicted to social media. According to the “Digital in 2018 Global Overview 201 report, which was prepared by We Are Social and Hootsuite with data collected from 238 countries and lastly published in January/ 2018, 42% of the world's population, ie 3.19 billion people, is connected to at least one social network. 210 million people in the world suffer from the internet and social media addiction. In light of these data, social media addiction is growing day by day. On the other hand, the handicrafts of traditional countries are forgotten in a corner. These traditional crafts that have existed for centuries have come to the brink of extinction today. This project aims not only to overcome social media addiction but also to promote the continuity of lost crafts with its motto “let’s touch the handicrafts not the screen”. This project aims to enable participants to learn a traditional craft and to acquire a hobby for socializing outside of social media, and will also bring together children, who have financial difficulties and live in rural areas, and participants in the framework of the workshop of the handcraft. In this way, this project aims to bring the participants together with a disadvantaged group and socialize them within a volunteer project away from social media, as well as to create a role model for children living in rural areas with financial difficulties and to convey this craft, which is taught to children, to the next generation.
In this project, participants will select from people who have excessive use of social media. The target group of this project will be children who live and study in rural areas, have disadvantages about their life. The project will last 6 days including arrival and departure days. The opening of this project will be by pieces of training about several topics and it will last 2 days; the following two days will be with the target group, the main application of the project. In the second day, there will be training about conscious use of social media (social media literacy) which will be given to participants to emphasize its importance. Also, participants will learn to make a handcraft belongs to Turkish culture in the second and third days. This activity aims that participants will teach the handcrafts which they trained before to target group. Accordingly, we believe this activity will improve the interaction between participants and the target group. Also, the participants will meet an alternative way beyond social media by getting in touch with handcrafting. According to our approach, participants and target group will touch something except electronic devices. In this way, they could continue to make any other handcrafts in their countries. Following two days, fourth and fifth days of the project will be with target group who are children aged between 6-14. These children are living and studying in rural areas of Turkey, they do not have much opportunity to do something. With this project, we will meet with them and do several activities including games, small pieces of training with amusement and handcrafting. In the fifth day, children and participants will go on a trip near historical, natural and other places to see. The aim of this part of this project is realizing beauties around us and try to live in moment “carpe diem” enjoy the participation. Also, without any devices, participants and children will draw, write or sing about what they see. And the last and departure day of the project includes a trip to İstanbul. We will discover the İstanbul, then say ‘goodbye’ to all participants.
As we mentioned before, the number of unconscious users in social media is increasing from day to day. Social media make people less social because people spend a lot of time on their social accounts and do not talk face to face. In this project, it is aimed to teach how to use those kinds of media consciously. For instance; to reduce the time of using social media and to make them aware of what for they are using social media. Another important goal is to show that being social is outside social media. For this; gaining hobby(handcrafts) by an expert(pottery) and doing different activities with children who are in rural areas. Social media awareness of participants and target groups will increase at the end of the projects. They will be practiced about how to use social media for their benefits. They will make friends in a different culture and learn different cultures features. This project will enable the realization of natural beauties. The important and main purpose of the project is to demonstrate to people that reality is more beautiful than social media.