Teachers' social media use considerations and awareness

This study aims to examine the social media that intensively used in daily life from the view point of teachers. In this direction, teachers are trying to determine social media use patterns and habits, social media considerations and awareness levels about these tools. In the study, a relational search model was selected from the research studies and data were collected via online questionnaire. The questionnaire consists of both multiple-choice and open-ended items. The quantitative data were coded into the statistical analysis program and the qualitative data were analyzed by using the thematic analysis methods. 382 teachers from all over Turkey participated in the survey. The general conclusions reached in the study can be summarized as follows:  Teachers do not follow such groups when they are reluctant to share information in social media on topics such as religion, politics, nationality.  It is seen that teachers are hesitant to express their feelings and thoughts in the social media and share their concerns due to the anxiety about what happens after sharing.  Participants share more information on the social media that they think there is no risk known by the community such as name, sex, city of living, birthday. x  Participants have a view that teachers should use social media as a teacher, but majority opinion is that teachers should use social media.  Participants generally follow developments related to privacy in social media and they are widely known to be open to friends only.  Many of the participants who are considering closing social media accounts have noted that this is a waste of time, and it is possible to say that there are reasons such as monitoring, disturbance, etc. among the reasons for closure of other participants.  Social media has become a daily routine for teachers in Turkey.  In general, participants describe social media as useful or harmful, depending on the purpose of use.