Tackling Social Media Use with Positive Approach Erasmus Project

Project Title

Tackling Social Media Use with Positive Approach

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Health and wellbeing

Project Summary

SMAPP project was concentrated on the negative and positive consequences of social media use which has been becoming widespread every day. This project was aimed to search the opportunities of using social media itself against the social media addiction. In this sense it could be easily said that it is very fruitful with its results. It gave many different insights to participants from partner organizations on (1) the theoretical framework of ‘social media addiction’ as well as other types of behavioral addictions like internet/gaming disorders or gambling addiction; (2) possible intervention methods for recovery from these type of addictions; and (3) opportunities of social media use in adult education, public health and health communication programs. Two activities within SMAPP, namely survey and competition phases, were complementary to other activities and mobilities funded by budget and in harmony with the theoretical and practical results of SMAPP.

Objectives achieved as follows:

– Participants met with adult educators, public health professionals like physicians, social workers, psychologists, health educators and sociologists, addiction experts, communication and ITC experts for sharing good practices, exchanging knowledge and experiences and producing new insights towards social media use.

– By the training sessions and visiting relevant organizations at international, national and local level, participants had a chance to discover, share and compare the methods, techniques and tools used in adult education and public health education.

– With the survey results, the extend of social media use among youth became apparent for many professionals and institutions not actively part of the project as well as the partner organizations and it gave way to develop positive approach for studies on fighting with social media addiction.

The project is innovative through the composition of the partnership. It includes institutions of various types and structures, but all interested in the same question, i.e. how to use opportunities generated by social media in fighting with problem of social media addiction and how to develop social media competencies of educators, who are working in fields of adult education, public health education or addiction studies. 4 institutions formed the 4 basis of SMAPP. For positive approach, 1 institution from public health (ISM), 1 from addiction studies (Dianova Portugal), 1 from adult education (Kairos) and 1 from ICT (Cassandra Solutions) are needed to construct positive approach by exchanging their professional experiences and good practices. Since the main aim of this project is to develop new social media competencies of Project’s participants, all four areas of professions were included. The composition of partners of SMAPP is established according to this necessity.

During the SMAPP project there were

1. Transnational meetings -mainly for management purposes,

2. Staff trainings – to facilitate an environment for employees of adult education and public health for exchanging experiences and ideas. The extend of trainings were specified according to needs of participants like developments of new competencies, of new positive approach to addiction studies, of interdisciplinary perception of adult education and public health communication for social media studies and of any skills be useful for their institutional capacity. The content of these trainings were shared among relevant national and local stakeholders.

3. Research study – to understand current situation of social media use among youth. The aim of this survey was not limited to discover the level of social media addiction but also to reveal the potential of benefits of using social media.

4. Workshops -participants had a chance to use their professions and new competencies for common purpose; 1. by evaluating social media use by research results, 2.by generating new ideas for social media platforms, 3.by analyzing social media data.

5. Competition –as a pilot study to examine the possibility to use social media resources in order to make social media users think about social media addiction. The aim of this competition was to disseminate viral movies on problematic use of social media and internet produced by social media users through their own social media accounts.

Impact – All activities were designed to extend and develop educators’ digital competencies on social media use and develop new positive approaches to social media addiction studies which are also innovative practices in terms of being different from other addiction studies. SMAPP was designed to create an opportunity to exchange good practices and experiences, which are complementary to each other, of education and health professionals working in various field. Through the results -trainings, workshops, survey and competition and participants’ newly acquired skills, SMAPP was successful in terms of their objectives.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 68640 Eur

Project Coordinator

ISTANBUL IL SAGLIK MUDURLUGU & Country: TR

Project Partners

• Kairós Sociedad Cooperativa de Iniciativa Social
• Associação Dianova Portugal
• Cassandra Solutions Società Cooperativa