The Psychology of Social Media is a new course offered on campus. Based on what professor Brian Kinghorn, who teaches it, mentioned, this is the class in which he wants students to be able to have conversations about social media and understand how it affects them in both positive and negative ways. He said students need to use this knowledge for good to improve friendships.
“People are really familiar with social media, and they have used it for most of their lives. Facebook is around a decade now. Most people in the university now are using social media someway, but so many of us haven’t thought about how to use it or how it is changing the ways we interact with each other. The way we think about things, the way we socialize, and the way we are processing information and learning are essential for this psychology of social media class,” said Kinghorn.
“If you are a fish in water, you will be the last creature to discuss the water because you have to been taken out of the water to know that exists. With air, we don’t really think of the air much because we breathe it. If we were without air, we would know it wasn’t there,” said Kinghorn, explaining the purpose for this class. This metaphor was used by a guest lecturer, Dennis G Martin of BYU in Provo, in Winter 2015 semester.
Kinghorn said he was planning to start a conversation with students who are using social media and digital natives but really didn’t think about it because it has been a part of their lives growing up. He wants students to think about it in a more academic way.
In addition, it will affect the way they use it for good and not for ill, he said he hopes. Kinghorn researched this topic and presented his research in New York.
The first time the class was offered was last summer, and he did some research from students’ data. He asked them several questions about what they thought about social media before and after the course. After that, he found out students were more aware of positive aspects of social media after they were taking the course.
They recognized the need to find a balance in their social media use, and they went from feeling overall a little bit negative about social media to an overall positive outlook on it. “They increased their perspective of social media as a positive tool,” said Kinghorn.
For this class, Kinghorn said students don’t even need to be majoring in psychology. He has business, education, or music majors in his class this semester. He wished more students could join in this class to learn and discuss about the important factors in people’s lives, and how they can develop themselves.