Social Media Literacy and Thought Diversity with ConnectED

The world around us is increasingly all about speed – fast fashion, shortened attention spans, viral trends and quicker news cycles. As this shift happens, online content is also more prone to be divisive in order to get more clicks and views thus a bigger share of the algorithms driving social media. 

A Statistics Canada study in 2023 shows that 62% of young people aged 15 to 24 get their news primarily from algorithmically tailored social media feeds like Tik Tok, YouTube or Instagram. Together with ConnectED, the Greenwood community recently explored the impacts of this polarizing media diet and how to develop the social media literacy skills needed to parse the world today. 

Within our community, we want to ensure that our students are known, respected and have the tools they need, both today and tomorrow, for engaging in conversations and learning that incorporate curiosity, empathy and complexity. The social media landscape heightens the importance for teachers to help students learn how to identify credible sources and develop a pluralistic understanding of differing perspectives. Since August, Greenwood has been working closely with ConnectED to help strengthen social media literacy skills for staff and students. To aid in this approach, we hosted a virtual session with ConnectED on December 9 for parents and guardians to engage students on this topic at home.

Yoni Buckman, a senior educator from ConnectED, spoke with parents and guardians about the principles and strategies to counter polarization. Yoni began the session by detailing how the media landscape has changed. “In the past, we used to find the news, and now the news is finding us,” Yoni said of how the world at large is trending towards passive news consumption. “How algorithms and other outlets curate the media that we consume is a really important thing for us to start to think intentionally about.” 

Another factor in the increased polarization is how algorithms deliver different content based on the filters created through what type of content we engage with the most. Yoni compared how traditional media like radio, televised news, newspapers, magazines offered a shared, common experience to how social media offers a very personalized news feed. “As algorithmically curated media is being put out in the world [...], I’m actually not seeing, in a sense, the same front page as you,” Yoni explained. “And so the more fragmented and the more personalized this becomes, the more polarized our society gets.”

To combat the divisiveness our current media landscape has created, it can be very impactful for teens if the adults in their lives model mindfulness in their media consumption habits, Yoni said. He suggested that parents and guardians demonstrate three mindsets: empathy, complexity and curiosity. Modelling these three mindsets can help promote more understanding and more openness to help establish common ground. “Any way that we can show an openness to learn and understand,” Yoni said. “I think that is going to be a really helpful and constructive mindset for our students to get curious as they consume media about what are the perspectives I’m not even aware of? Where are my blind spots?” These practices will help students develop the skills to approach their media feeds with curiosity and help bridge the polarizing effects.

Thank you to those who attended the virtual session on December 9. You can view the recording and transcript of the session on the ON Resource Board. We will build off this Social Media Literacy session with an upcoming session on January 19, 2026 about the use of social media and its impact on teens’ mental health. To sign up, check the link in Week @ A Glance.