Under the title "Social Media and Me" we have been able to work in 2 teams with 8 classes at the Max Beckmann School on topics such as our social media use, digital identity and hate speech.

Life, especially for young people, takes place mostly in the digital world. Texts over WhatsApp, videos on TikTok, YouTube and Switch, pictures on Instagram and Snapchat,... - digital world in everyday life seems endless. Social interaction is no longer dependent on face-to-face conversations but takes place all over the world thanks to social media: friends, no matter wether they are on the doorstep or on the other side of the world, are always aware of what's going on. Social media is more than just another app on the phone screen, it's a possibility to maintain relationships, celebrate successes and learn new things. On the other hand it's a place with negative impact, such as cyberbullying, hate speech and other negative self-experiences. Young people being confronted with it are getting younger and younger.

This Workshops topic is (digital) identity, which is formed by social media use and the internet itself. This relativly new phenomenom includes, on the one hand, the more or less creation of one's own digital identitiy in the creation of profiles in social media channels, but on the other hand, the production of a digital identity through the provision of our data and its evaluation by algorithms.

As users, we quickly lose track of what can be read about us, where on the internet. The supposed anonymity invites us to share all sort of information and that can quickly come back to us in form of cyberbullying and hate speech.

In this workshop we looked at who we want to be on the net and who we are. We asked ourselves how algorithms can shape and use our digital identity. Finally, we practiced together how to deal with hate speech.