Social media gives an opportunity to reach everybody anytime and anywhere regardless of individuals’ age, gender, socioeconomic conditions or cultural backgrounds. It creates many advantages for professionals in adult education; by using social media, it is possible to decrease costs, to reach more people, to measure of efficiency of their programs. Similarly, experts of public health communication and health education could use it to disseminate health messages to increase public awareness on specific health issues. On the other hand, excessive and inappropriate use of social media creates many problems for individuals. ‘Social media addiction’ as subtype of internet addiction, results in negative life consequences very similar to other type of addictions such as academic failure, job loss, marriage or financial breakdown. It should also be noted social media addiction should be tackled differently than other addictions in regards to easy accessibility of people to the subject of addiction such as smart phones, tablets or other internet devices. Although therapy and rehabilitation of social media addiction is very similar, social media itself could not be branded as ‘bad’ in its nature. In fact social media is indispensible fact of our lives and positive utilization of it is very diverse in social life and also in adult education and oublic health campaigns. This project is designed to use advantages of social media against problem of social media addiction. In contrast to other addiction studies whose main object is to keep individuals out of the source of addiction (negative approach), SMAPP will benefit useful side of ‘source’ against the addiction to ‘source’ (positive approach). Objectives of project: - Meeting with adult educators, public health professionals like physicians, social workers, psychologists, health educators and sociologists, addiction experts, communication and ITC experts for exchanging good practices, knowledge and experiences. - Discovering, sharing and comparing methods, techniques and tools used in adult education and public health education. - Developing a positive approach for studies on fighting with social media addiction and conducting a pilot study -competition. 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 form the 4 basis of SMAPP. For positive approach, 1 institution from public health (IHSM), 1 from addiction studies (Dİanova Protugal), 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 should have been included. The composition of partners of SMAPP is established according to this necessity. There will be 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 are 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. 3. Research study - to understand current situation of social media use 4. Workshops -participants will have a chance to use their professions and new competencies for common purpose; 1. by evaluating social meda use by research results, 2.by generating guidelines for social media platforms, 3.by analyzing social media data 5. Competition -In accordance with objective of Project, development of positive approach, it is aimed by competitions that social media users will think about social media addiction and produce materials (viral movies and scripts) for social media itself. The aim of these competition is to disseminate viral movies through their own social media users' own network. 6. Award Ceremony - as dissemination activity Impact - All activities are 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 is 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.
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.