For the fourth and final week my group and I have been bringing all our research together with everything we have learned over the past four weeks while continuing to perfect our final website. We have been organizing our research, proofreading our writing, and making sure our personal experiments connect with the research we’ve found.

Our group’s goal was to understand how social media affects attention span, productivity, focus, and learning in digital environments. At the beginning of the project, our research showed that social media has both positive and negative effects. It can create distractions and reduce attention span, but it also provides access to educational content and learning opportunities. This made me realize that how we use social media is the most important part. 

The personal experiments were the most valuable part of this inquiry for me. Tracking my own screen time made me realize how often I reached for my phone without thinking about it. I found that studying with my phone in another room improved my focus, productivity, and even my mood. I also explored educational content on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. I found the short form videos were often too short for deeper learning. While YouTube’s longer videos helped me stay focused on one topic and retain more information.

Another key takeaway was realizing how important digital literacy is. Fact checking educational content reminded me that social media can be a valuable learning tool, but learners still need to evaluate information critically rather than just accepting everything they see online.

One of the biggest outcomes of this project is that it has actually changed my own social media habits. I have become much more intentional about how I use social media and have found that I am much more productive when I regulate my social media use.

Looking back at the question we asked in our first process post, I don’t think limiting social media completely is the answer. I think being intentional about how we use it makes the biggest difference. This inquiry has changed the way I think about social media and I know I will continue using what I learned long after this course has ended.