How To ACTUALLY Learn About Social Justice (on Social Media)
On "educating yourself" via the Internet.
A lot of what I know about social justice comes from what I learned from social media, and I’m only slightly ashamed to admit it. Whether it’s online content creators creating in-depth video essays about complex subjects or forum posts about individual people’s experiences, there’s a lot you can learn from marginalized people that you can’t learn from traditional media.
That said, many people lack the media literacy skills necessary to digest information from social media correctly…hence the imminent collapse of our democracy. There’s also been a lot of commotion about the falling literacy rates among Americans; the kids can’t read (and honestly neither can us adults). Even the best of us are victim to low attention spans and poor knowledge retention; this past week I was scrolling on TikTok I came across a video that asked, “Can you remember the subject of the video 3 videos before this one?” and, shockingly, I couldn’t! So much for my PhD…
Uncritically viewing social media also leads to the spreading of misinformation; and the left is just as guilty of this as the right! As an illustrative example, a few weeks ago I came across a video discussing the heritage Israeli’s current genocidal prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. The video claimed that Netanyahu (and some other top Israeli officials) have mostly non-Israeli heritage and thus don’t have any claim to the land they occupy. The video specifically claimed that Netanyahu changed his name only to sound more indigenous to the region. This maps onto the very true idea that Israeli is doing a colonialism to Palestine, but it’s also misinformation, and naturally, Jewish people have had to do the hard work of reversing entropy by correcting such claims. A friend of mine, Marla, has done an excellent job breaking down the lineage of Israel’s population, combating antisemitism while also being pro-Palestine. In reality, Netanyahu did change his name, but only to what his family name was before his grandfather Europeanized it, something that Jewish people commonly do. As Marla points out, we can criticize Israel’s actions without resorting to antisemitic myths and misinformation. Clearly, everyone is vulnerable to accepting a reasonable-sounding non-fact that validates their existing beliefs. And social media increases the incidences of such occurrences by hundreds of times per day; that original video I mentioned, just one of many videos making similar misinformed claims, has millions of views while Marla’s videos have merely a few thousand.
I want to honor the transformative power of platforming marginalized people’s experiences while giving people the tools to be able to adequately assess what they watch online. I’m an instructional designer who teaches about both STEM and social justice issues in my classroom, so I think a lot about course design. I especially think about the disparity between what a traditional classroom looks like—with homework assignments, an instructor to give you feedback on your learning, and a community of fellow classmates to learn with—and what the “TikTok classroom” looks like, with its endless scrolling and malicious attention-economy tactics.
The obvious-but-unhelpful Tip #0 for learning on social media is: “Don’t!” We ought to learn from longform media (books, documentaries, articles from reputable news sources) or real-world conversations. Online media is inherently reductive, while real people are complicated. For all that I learned from YouTube and TikTok videos, I learned so much more from interacting and organizing with real-life people.
To try and help out the young people who get most of their information from TikTok, here are 3 features of “traditional” education that aren’t present when you “learn” on social media, especially when it comes to social justice issues…
Feature 1: Scaffolding
Consider math education as an analogy. While there are many problems with traditional math education, the years-long structure is what I want to focus on. First, you learn about simple addition and subtraction. Then, you use that foundation to build up to multiplication and division. After that, you build up to trigonometry, pre-algebra, algebra, pre-calculus, calculus, and so on. Some schools even have accelerated tracks for advanced students, specialized classes for those pursuing certain career tracks, and support structures for those who are struggling on any given sub-topic.
In a healthy society, social justice education would have the same level of educational intimacy, because the injustices in the world are similarly complex. One might first learn about sexism and racism as merely things that individuals do to individuals (e.g., microaggressions), then later learn that these things are actually systemic as well (e.g., anti-abortion laws and redlining), and even later learn that the issues of sexism and racism are actually deeply interconnected (e.g., intersectionality, racialized and colonial genders). These three “levels” of the scaffold could take place in elementary school, middle school, and high school, respectively.
Unfortunately, we live in this timeline, where social justice education is either non-existent or a complete joke. In my own K-12 education, I learned that the Holocaust was very bad, but learned none of the events leading up to it. I also didn’t learn that the Montgomery Bus Boycotts were a highly-organized movement with many actors working for many months, but instead learned that they started because Rosa Parks, an individual actor, “was really tired one day and didn’t feel like walking to the back of the bus”. Yeah.
Online content creators are attempting to teach people about social justice, but instead of creating a staged progression of learning (like math education) they merely teach to their own skill level. This isn’t a bad thing—we have 4th grade teachers and 8th grade teachers and so on—but without some level of curation or structure, it results in a lot of confusion as elementary-level “students” (viewers) are thrust into high school “classrooms” (videos). Not all videos are for all audiences, which causes grief to viewers and creators alike; as an educational trans TikToker myself, I’ve produced numerous audio documentaries to cope with the fact that I often have to teach “Trans 101” content (pronouns, sex=/=gender) when I’d much rather be getting into the nitty-gritty of Marxist feminism.
It doesn’t help that social media algorithms can easily lock people into their “grade level” by sorting people into pools of content they’ve already engaged with. Thanks to algorithms, if you never go out of your way to learn about trans perspectives, you’ll simply never learn about them. There are also online spaces that are inherently toxic, expecting beginners to the world of social justice education to hold many complex subjects in their mind from the get-go. Which leads us to…
Feature 2: Feedback Loops
It sounds obvious, but in regular classrooms, you have an instructor to guide your learning. Obviously, self-directed learning is a thing, and being beholden to a particular teacher at a particular institution can lead one to be influenced by that teacher/institution’s pre-existing biases. However, if you watch 10 TikTok videos in a row, who’s to say which ones are accurate? Who’s assessing your ability to retain or apply the information you got from those videos? Homework and exams aren’t just things that teachers give you to keep you busy; they’re meant to make sure that you’re learning what you’re supposed to be learning!
The mere act of completing an activity rather than viewing learning materials can be transformative. It’s one thing to watch a video about racial justice, but have you ever been prompted to unpack your own racial identity or your own role in upholding white supremacy? Do you even know how to do that? If you tried to do that, how would you check that you did it correctly, or came to the correct conclusions?
Without this feedback loop—where a student retains information, applies it, gets something wrong, and tries again—it’s much harder to work towards a robust understanding of a topic. You might have done a math problem 92% correct, but missed a negative sign somewhere, so your final value is off. You might be correct about a country’s history of colonization, but make a mistake in claiming that the country’s leader’s ethnicity has anything to do with their colonial actions.
Sites like TikTok have some version of “instructor” (video creator) “feedback”—comments sections, Stitches and Reply videos—but this isn’t a great simulacrum of a classroom environment. For one thing, it’s very one-sided, not to mention everything is publicly available, which doesn’t lend well to social justice conversations where learners need space to work through their biases. There’s not much of a culture of “Yes, and…” or “Yes, but…” on social media. It’s very binary; like or dislike, happy or angry, praise or trash. (This is by design, to drive up engagement and thus revenue.) In a healthy learning environment, a student can get green check marks and red X’s alongside each other, not to mention written feedback (“I like the way you connected these subjects!” “This isn’t relevant here; try again!”) I definitely understand why social media-based educators are so on edge; the stakes of being wrong on a math test are low—maybe a hit to your GPA at worst—while the stakes of being wrong about a social justice issue can be genuinely harmful, even fatal at worst. Microaggressions hurt people, and failing to identify systemic causes of large problems can make the actions of seemingly well-intentioned organizations actually deadly (see: anti-trafficking organizations that seek to further criminalize sex work). It’s gut-wrenching for me to see so many anti-trans videos online going mostly unchallenged by those video’s target audience, and I don’t claim to have a solution to that other than slow, vulnerable, real-world conversation.
Curation—lesson planning—is another key feature in education. As I said before, having an algorithm curate your content for you can be detrimental to learning. A real-life instructor can help direct your attention towards positive learning, but what if learning about issues that affect large groups is best done in large groups?
Feature 3: Community
Unless you were homeschooled or did your entire education over Zoom somehow, you know that having classmates makes your educational experience SO much better. Having friends in your class can motivate you to show up to lectures and stay accountable to your learning; doing homework with friends after class is the only reason I passed my classes in my undergraduate chemical engineering program. How many times have you heard about a social injustice in the world, followed a bunch of activists on social media, only to get burnt out after a few months, until this next human rights disaster occurs? Human beings are social creatures, and we learn better in communities than we do as individuals.
Social media treats everyone like an individual. Your feed/algorithm is like nobody else’s, and only you are accountable to your own learning. This is tough in any learning context, but especially for the inherently-nuanced and complex world of social justice. Intersectionality comes to mind; you might think you understand the needs of a Black lesbian (they are Black + gay + woman, so they must experience racism + homophobia + sexism), but once you actually get out there and talk to one, you realize that there are experiences unique to being a Black lesbian that neither Black people, gay people, or women face individually. As Kimberlé Crenshaw reminds us, “Intersectionality is not additive. It’s fundamentally reconstitutive.” And she would know; she came up with it!
Also, as anyone who’s been in a book club can tell you, two people can read the same work and come away with two very different interpretations. Or, they can have similar interpretations but pick up on (or resonate more with) different details. Or, they can clock the misinformation better than you can. Or, you can clock the misinformation better than someone else can, creating a teaching moment that empowers you and affirms your learning progression!! I promise you that you can learn more by watching one TikTok video and then discussing it with a friend than you can by watching 10 TikTok videos.
Solutions!
What kind of educator would I be if I didn’t provide resources and suggestions? If you’re used to getting all your media from socials, here are some other strategies you can learn with…
Suggestion 1: Scaffolded Learning Resources
If you’re going to learn about social justice—or any subject—you first need to establish your current knowledge level. Everybody has to start somewhere, and it’s important to practice intellectual humility by admitting we don’t know something!
My favorite resource to share with people is this list of Scaffolded Anti-Racist Resources. It provides a tiered list of anti-racist competency levels from beginner to expert, and for each tier, it provides multiple forms of media (books, podcasts, and yes, even videos!) plus activities and reflection questions. For easy sharing, this list is always available at: https://tinyurl.com/ScaffoldedID and also available at the link in my social media bios under the “Anti-Racist Action Plan Worksheet”.
If you know of any lists like this for topics other than anti-Black racism, let me know in the comments!
Suggestion 2: Workbooks
Much more effective than watching videos is completing activities! A favorite of mine is “This Book Is Anti-Racist: 20 Lessons on How to Wake Up, Take Action, and Do The Work” by Tiffany Jewel. With gorgeous illustrations by Aurélia Durand, readers learn about why racism exists while completing reflective activities. Way better than mindlessly scrolling TikTok!
I’ve also heard good things about “My Gender Workbook: How to Become a Real Man, a Real Woman, the Real You, or Something Else Entirely” by Kate Bornstein & Diane DiMasa, but I haven’t read this one.
Drop your favorite social justice workbooks in the comments!!
Suggestion 3: Learn With Friends!
How can we know if we’re truly learning if nobody is checking our work? Plenty of social justice educators are out there, who you can (and should!) pay to come to your workplace or community group. For example, my good friend Maybe Burke has been in the business of teaching about trans issues for years; go hire her!
Alternatively, forming a book club or learning group is free! Your local library or bookstore may have a reading group to join as well; here in Western Mass, Bookends in Florence currently has a reading group to learn about Palestinian history & culture, and I’m certain that they’re just one of dozens.
My suggestion is always to make this a positive space; bring food and beverages, play music, create a good vibe. Nobody wants to go to a book club out of guilt or fear; I attended many of these in the summer of 2020, and they weren’t very conducive to learning. It sucks that the world sucks, but you’re taking an active step in making it better, and that’s worth celebrating!!
The point of all of this is to provide accountability and feedback, integrating social justice education into your daily life. If you have any more tips for engaging in these subjects, let me know!
Go be great and learn a lot! <3
Currently Reading
An opinion piece about the state of AI research, and how it’s not as “disruptive” to the status quo as tech bros want us to believe.
Speaking of the evils of ~platforms~, this platform has Nazis, apparently??? Screw that!
Thanks to the hard work of activist groups like Beyond Plastics, the EPA is finally undertaking a review of polyvinyl chloride’s toxicity! PVC is incredibly poisonous, as I covered on TikTok when the East Palestine, OH disaster occurred in February (yeah, that was this year!!)
Jessica DeFino’s piece about skin care influencers starting to abandon their 20-step routines in favor of the “Anna Marie method”; facial cleanser, moisturizer, done!
Watch History
A video on systemic change that I showed to my Green Chemistry class on the last day.
A deep dive on a content creator who embodies “main character syndrome”, a complete disconnect with reality.
Bops, Vibes, & Jams
And now, your weekly Koko.
That’s all for now! See you next week with more sweet, sweet content.
In solidarity,
-Anna