Inquiry Topic

  •  Social Media and Attention Spans: Does social media support learning or reduce focus and productivity?

Inquiry Question: 

  • How does social media affect attention span, focus, productivity, and learning in digital environments?

Purpose of the Inquiry

  • The purpose of this inquiry project is to explore how social media impacts concentration, learning habits, and productivity in online environments. Social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and X are increasingly used for communication, entertainment, and educational content. However, these platforms may also contribute to distraction, reduced attention spans, and difficulty maintaining focus.
  • Through this inquiry,  we want to examine both the positive and negative effects of social media on learning and productivity while reflecting on my own digital habits and experiences.
  • This topic connects to distributed and open learning because many learners now use social media as a source of information, collaboration, and educational content.

Learning Plan and Weekly Blog Posts

Week 1: Understanding Social Media and Learning

  • Look online and through course content to find research on how social media is used in education and learning 
  • Looking research or stats on search time preferably in ages 12-18 on social media use and screen time
  • Look into Australia banned social media for children under the age of 16
  • Reflect on my own social media habits and attention span

Week 2: Attention Span and Digital Distraction

  • Look into how prolonged scrolling and notification could affect focus/ concentration
  • Track our personal screentime including distraction
    • Could be documented by screen time app or journaling  
  • Compare study sessions with and without social media access
  • Compare studying or school work with and without phone distractions or social media 
    • This could be by keeping the phone somewhere else 

Week 3: Educational Content on Social Media

  • Engage in and analyze educational creators on our social media platforms: 
    • Tiktok
    • instagram 
    • Youtube   
  • Critically think about based on research from past weeks or our own experiences whether short-form content improves or weakens learning 
  • Look into credibility of the content we are engaging in by fact checking with peer reviewed research: what did we find 

Week 4: Reflection and Final Evaluation

  • Summarize our findings about or inquiry topic and question
  • Reflect on our own experiences and possible changes in productivity and focus the past weeks 
  • Evaluate based off the past weeks if social media is more beneficial or harmful for learning. 
  • Track other factors like sleep, mood and overall feelings and talk about potential changes we would or could make to better ourself and our productivity 

Technologies and Platforms

To document our learning we will:  learning, I plan to use:

  • Post weekly on our wordpress blogs
  • Use apps or a calendar or some sort of planner to track weekly tasks and keep ourselves accountable 
  • Use screen time tracking tools and screen time limits on problematic apps
  • Use educational resources, articles, podcasts, and videos

Multimedia and Open Resources

Each weekly post could include:

  • Reflection and analysis and research based on week above 
  • Screenshots or graphs related to screen time or 
  • Journal entries
  • Mind maps or visuals similar to that
  • Links to articles, videos, podcasts, and educational resources we found helpful

Expected Outcome

By the end of this inquiry project I hope to be able to better understand the effects of social media use and how it plays a role in attention span and focus. Whether that be from research and better educating ourselves or from personal experience and improving in areas because of this assignment.