1. Investigating the 21st Century K-16
Social Media Citizenship
Focusing On Current Unregulated
K – 16 Student Social Media Use
Adalheidur Reed

2. What Age’s Are K-16 Students
Actively Using Social Media?

3. Abstract
This Study is aimed at examining social media use in K
– 16 students, gauging at what age they initially start
using social media, how and from whom they learn
to use social media, what types of interactions they
engage in (Good, Bad or UGLY!). Further assessing if
there are currently any formal “Best Practice”
examples for K – 16 students to follow, investigating
if the time has come that the government step in
with Formal Social Media Education (FSME) and or
Standardized Social Media Curriculum (SSMC).

4. Introduction
• To illuminate how far behind our current school
system is in addressing the need for creating and
incorporating SSMC a brief history of where social
networking started and where it has come is needed.
• The ability to socially interact via a computer
mediated discourse is by no means new to our
society. In fact, the ability to socially interact using
computers has been around since ARPANET was
created in 1968. In 1968 ARPANET became the
world’s first packet switching network that
composed a global internet. (Wikipedia, 2012)

5. Need For This Study
• There are over 901 million active Facebook
users and 400 million Twitter accounts
(Wikipedia, 2012) .
• Facebook and Twitter are banned or
discouraged in most K -16 classroom
environments.
• How many of these users are K – 16 Students?
• Who or what is teaching formal best practice?

6. Results From a Pilot Study Asking Parents
Perceptions of Their Children's Social Media Use
When asked “What type of online social media profile does your child
have?” 92% reported their children used Facebook or 103 out of 112
responding to this item. Only 13% out of the103 respondents reported
they used something other than the mainstream social media listed.
# Answer Response %
1 Facebook 103 92%
2 MySpace 7 6%
3 Twitter 12 11%
Yahoo
4 12 11%
Messenger
5 Windows Live 19 17%
6 Skype 33 29%
7 Other 15 13%

7. How old was your child when their
first social media profile was created?
• A total of 82%, or 95 participants out of 116
that responded to this item, had children
under the age of 14 when their Social Media
Profiles where created.
# Answer Response %
1 1-5 9 8%
2 6-10 28 24%
3 11-14 68 59%
4 15-18 21 18%

8. Parents Monitoring?
• When asked “Do you monitor your child-
children while they engage in using online
social media?” Only 13% answered “Yes
Every Step”.
# Answer Response %
Yes Every
1 15 13%
Step
Most Of the
2 37 33%
time
3 Pretty Much 34 30%
4 Not Much 25 22%
5 Not At All 1 1%
Total 112 100%

9. Background on Standardized Social
Media Curriculum.
• As Of today’s date August 2012 there is no
Standardized Social Media Curriculum
(SSMC). Does the current use by students K
– 16 warrant the need for SSMC?
• Many High Schools and Junior High Schools
ban social media such as Facebook within
school walls, claiming that it is distraction.
(Wikipedia, 2012)

10. Theoretical Framework
Vygotsky’s Thought and Language, shows us that
when children learn how to speak it is about
learning how to form thoughts into verbal
spoken sentences’ for the purpose of
communication.
Today’s children are learning how to form
thoughts onto social media networks, many
times missing inner speech to edit oneself
(Vygotsky, 1964)

11. Theoretical Framework
Qualitative &
Quantitative
Data Gathered
Grounded
Theory
Hypotheses

12. Research Questions Proposed
The Main object of this research will be to gauge whether there is currently a social media
Wild Wild West setting for K – 16 students and if so what can be done to foster a better
or “Best Practice” social media environment for K – 16 students; which warranted
asking the following questions:
• At What Age do K – 16 students start using social media?
• Who or what is monitoring K – 16 minors that are already actively engaged in the use of
social media?
• Who, what and how are K – 16 students learning how to use social media?
• What are the possible long term, short term damages that can be caused to K – 16
students from using social media?
• How can long or short term social media damage for K – 16 students be avoided?
• Are K – 16 students good social media citizens?

13. What Do K – 16 Students Know About
Privacy
• What types of interaction are K – 16 students
participating in while engaging in using social
media and is it safe?
• Who is navigating their social media journey?
• Who is protecting K- 16 students while they
travel the social media highway?
• What, if at all, are their privacy levels set to?

14. Social Media Background History
• The ability to socially interact via computer mediated
discourse has been around for the last 44 years!
(Wikipedia, 2012)
– ARPANET 1968 / Robert Taylor
– USENET 1980 / Tom Triscot and Tom Ellis
– Friendster 2002 / Jonathan Abrams
– Linkedin 2002 / Hoffman, Blue, Ly, Vaillant, Hower, Guericke,
Beitzel,Eves,McNish, Pujante, and Saccheri
– MySpace 2003 / Tom Anderson
– Facebook 2004 / Zuckerberg, Moskovitz and Huges
– Twitter 2006 / Dorsey, Glass, Williams, Stone
– Google+ 2011 / Google Inc.

15. Social Media Background Today
• There are many forms of social media today, ranging
from social networking to professional networking:
– Linkedin is a professional network.
– Facebook is most known as a social network but can
also be used to network professionally.
– Twitter is know as a news media network where you
can find business’s, newspapers, celebrities and friends
Tweeting about current events.
– Google+ is the newest of these social medias and is
starting to earn a reputation as a network with the best
tools for education and business network sharing.

16. Largest Social Medium is Facebook
• Today, 6 years after opening to the general public, there are over
901 million active Facebook users (Wikipedia, 2012).
• Where did all these users learn how to use Facebook?
• How many of the 901 Million active users are children under 18?
• May 2012 CEO of Facebook Mark Zeckerburg thinks that it is time
that the current 13 year old age limit be lifted because children
are able to learn from using Facebook (MSNNow, 2012). Now
what?
• The main source of interacting and communicating in colleges is
Facebook. The tool for finding and researching current and
potential future students has become Facebook. (Burgos, 2012)

17. Is There A “Best Practice”?
• Lips (2010) claimed that online learning in the K-12
virtual classroom can break all barriers caused by race,
sex, status or location.
• Schools are attempting to create their own social media
websites with little to no buy in from students.
• Will forcing students to use education social media
websites like Edmondo play a working role in teaching
best practices if they are not being used outside the
school walls?
• If a large numbers of students are already engaged in the
use of social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest
and Linkedin, is tomorrow the time to introduce and
implement SSMC into K-16 education or was it yesterday?

18. Pilot Study Methods
Prior to the proposed study three pilot studies where conducted to
examine what types of social media interaction K – 16 students
are already engaged in.
• The first pilot study investigated parents perceptions of their K –
12 student social media use. Parents where recruited using social
media and an online survey (n = 142). Social media websites used
were:
– Facebook
– Twitter
– Linkedin
• The second pilot study investigated social media use from a group
of students from a university in North Texas(n = 20).
• The third pilot study investigated student social media use from a
university in Iceland and two universities in North Texas (n = 43).
• The total number of participants in all three studies where 206 (N
= 206).

19. Pilot Study Methods
• Fall 2011 IRB filled out and approved by The
University of North Texas
• Fall 2011 IRB filled out and approved by The
University of Texas Arlington
• Spring 2012 IRB filled out and approved by
The University of Iceland.
• Spring 2012 IRB filled out and approved by
University of North Texas.

20. Proposed Methods
Proposed methods for gathering quantitative and
qualitative research data:
• Update IRB’s from UNT, UTA and UI.
• Update and combine survey tools used in pilot
studies.
• Recruit participants using
– Social Media Networking (Facebook, Linkedin,
Twitter)
– E Mail
– Classroom students
• Qualtrics online survey tool used to gather data.

21. Participants & Setting
Participants are K – North Texas college
12 parents. students.
Setting is an online
survey administered
on the Web to North
Texas college
students and K – 12
parents on the World
Wide Web.

22. Proposed Methods Data Collection
Formal
Interviews
Online
Informal
Qualtrics
Interviews
Survey
K – 16
Students
& Parents
Through
Ethnographic
Blogs
Grounded Theory
Discovering theory through data Researcher Researcher
participation Participation
analysis flipping the hypotheses informal formal
observation Observation
process.

23. Proposed Methods Data Analyzing
Qualtricks
Deduse SPSS
Meaning
Fields
Qualitative Member
Checking
&
Quantitative
Triangulation NVivo
Grounded Theory
Discovering theory through data Transcripts &
Ethnographic
analysis flipping the hypotheses Blogs
process.

24. Proposed Timeline
October –
• IRB Filled November 2012 - • Gathering lit review
• IRB Filed • Writing dissertation
• IRB Approved • Data review update pilot Proposal
study survey • Editing dissertation
• Administer survey • Proposing Dissertation.
• Gathering data
August - November –
September 2012 – December 2012

25. Questions