Social work & social media: a survey of use, attitudes, and knowledge among U.S. students

ABSTRACT

The propagation of social media carries important ethical ramifications for communication norms, democracy, societal wellbeing, and individual mental health. These issues fall within the professional purview of social work. The purpose of this national survey study (N = 430) was to describe social media use, attitudes, and knowledge among social work students across the United States. To achieve this stated purpose, the authors obtained IRB Human Subjects approval and contacted undergraduate and graduate social work program directors at the identified 150 institutions using a random, stratified sampling method. A 66-item Qualtrics survey on social media use, attitudes, and knowledge was subsequently sent to program directors, who in turn administered the link to enrolled social work students. Overall, findings reveal that social work students seemingly hold conflicting attitudes toward social media that are also at times contrary to their self-reported knowledge and use of social media, and that have potential implications for the social work profession. The authors discuss social media’s ethical implications for the social work profession, supporting the position that information about social media should be included in social work curricula and making suggestions to this end.

KEYWORDS:

• Technology
• mental health
• social action, advocacy, and community organization
• social media education
• digital information and communication technologies
• ethics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lauren A. Ricciardelli

Dr. Lauren A. Ricciardelli is a full-time, tenure-track Assistant Professor and graduate faculty member in the Department of Social Work at the University of West Florida. Her research examines the ethical implications of digital information and communication technologies for social work practice, particularly at the macro-level. Her research also examines criminal legal systems/ death penalty policy, disability policy, and their intersection using a social inclusion/ exclusion theoretical framework. She has presented her research at professional regional and national conferences, and has served as an invited speaker for the Office of the Georgia Capital Defender and the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Adam E. Quinn

Dr. Adam E. Quinn received his Ph.D. in Social Work and an M.S. in Statistics from the University of Georgia in 2016. His research interests include social determinants of health disparities; predictors of secondary traumatic stress among mental health professionals; and understanding factors related to alcohol-use disorders among older adults across the life course. Previous to Adam's teaching and research work, he worked as a mental health counselor helping a variety of client populations, including adults struggling with PTSD, substance abuse, and/or severe and persistent mental illness, as well as adolescents with developmental trauma.

Larry Nackerud

Dr. Larry Nackerud earned his PhD from Cornell University in 1991 and worked as a Professor of Social Work in the University of Georgia School of Social Work prior to his retirement in 2020. His research focus is social welfare policy and immigration.