Theme 3: How can we make social media safer?

 How can we make social media safer?

As social media has become more and more influential a lot of young people spend their time using social media. This also means that problems like bullying or exclusion have spread to social media as well. Nowadays bullying doesn’t happen only in school or hobbies but it can happen in a child's home without the parents even knowing. This has brought the need for social workers in social media to help those in need. 

There are multiple educated people in social media platforms trying to share information to younger audiences as well as everyone overall. Some examples are laakari.atte and terapeuttiville, who both give information and advice on different topics. Laakari.atte or otherwise known as the doctor Atte has made their social media platforms as informative as possible. He shares stories that involve substance abuse and addiction. Atte has also shared his own experience with nicotine addiction and warns about the side effects of nicotine. In his TikTok page there is also information about supplements and other health facts.  

Terapeuttiville is known as therapist Ville who shares awareness of mental health issues. He currently has a lot of posts that involve his career as a politician. He still makes TikTok and Instagram posts that are meant to bring up discussion about young people's mental health. Ville also advocates the importance of therapy and mental health work. Both Ville and Atte point out the issues that Finnish health and social care is facing. Both typically use slang, music and spoken language as a way to connect to younger audiences. Neither of them use scientific terminology that would be hard to understand. Instead, they tend to explain everything extremely carefully but still keeping the audience interested.  

As a subject this is something that isn't new to me. I have in other courses been as interested in social work in social media platforms as I am now. This has led me to study this field more in my free time to find out how young people are getting the help they need. I found something called "Sua varten somessa" which basically translates to “For you in social media”. This is an organization that specializes in helping young people with bullying or harassment on social media. They have profiles in multiple platforms that young people use actively like Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat as well as their own website. They are a team of youth workers who answer messages and comments that they receive. They also create content that has valuable information about different subjects that are involved in social media. For example, they have done informative posts about nudes and sexual harassment that happens via social media platforms.  

In conclusion, social media's influence on young people has brought about significant challenges, including bullying and exclusion. This highlights the crucial role of social workers and professionals on these platforms to provide necessary support for younger people. People like laakari.atte and terapeuttiville effectively use social media to address health and mental health issues in an engaging way. In addition, the organization "Sua varten somessa" is crucial in helping young people deal with online harassment and bullying. I do believe that organizations and people like these should be way more present in social media because the use of social media is only growing.  

- Cesilia

References: 

Sua varten somessa. (2024). Available at: https://suavartensomessa.fi/in-english/  

laakari.atte. Available at: https://www.tiktok.com/@laakari.atte?lang=en

terapeuttiville. Available at: https://www.tiktok.com/@terapeuttiville?lang=en

"@brockuniversity Social Media" by giulia.forsythe is marked with CC0 1.0.