The Social Media Decision

The average teenager has a screen time of over 7 hours a day! This means for seven hours EVERY day they are leaving behind a digital footprint that could, and likely will, affect them when they apply to colleges, jobs or look for new relationships. This lesson plan from the Decision Education Foundation offers a structured way to ask students to review their online use and practices without bias, or telling them what to do, using the Decision Chain framework to guide students through careful, fact-based exploration.

By combining the essential life skill of decision-making with a real-world issue students care about, this lesson helps them practice how to engage with complex, often divisive topics. Students will learn to:

• Recognize how their environment and experiences shape their opinions
• Weigh long term vs short term values against each other
• Identify and research alternatives using credible, nonpartisan sources
• Apply the Decision Chain to reach a reasoned conclusion

The goal is not to tell students what to think, but to show them how to think more clearly—developing informed beliefs rooted in evidence rather than assumption.

All links are included in the pdf file included with this assignment. If you have any issues accessing pieces please reach out.

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Check out the lesson plan here!