Using social networks for social upbringing

Abstract

The article addresses the potential of using social networks in social education and for solving the problems of youth socialization. There is an urgent social need for the harmonious development of the child's personality, including in the Internet environment. At the same time, there is insufficient knowledge about the organization of education in social networks in science. The article identifies the experience of successful interaction between teachers and students on the Internet and ways of organizing event situations in social networks. The study was conducted in February-October 2020 and analysed the content of open official accounts of educational organizations in the social networks ‘VKontakte’, Instagram and documents of educational organizations. The complex use of observation methods, quantitative data processing, expert assessments was aimed at identifying forms of educational activity that are promising for implementation online in social networks. The study showed that, despite the variety of topics and styles, the content of official school accounts resembles a list of news about holidays and other public events. The accounts do not contain materials that could cause vivid emotions and sensations in children, become a source of experiences, value attitudes, experience of interacting with people. Consequently, schools do not provide children with opportunities for self-knowledge, self-determination, self-realization, and do not support their initiatives in social networks. The article recommends that schools expand the practice of organizing networked educational events. For this, they need to create groups of different ages for children and adults for joint planning, organizing, conducting, summing up creative deeds. The maintenance of a thematic Instagram account of a school is offered as an example of a successful subject-subject interaction between a teacher-educator and students in social networks.