8 Fun, Effective Steps

In today’s digital age, social media is a powerful platform for exchanging ideas, sparking conversations, and fostering global connections. However, it’s also a space where disagreements can escalate into offensive and divisive exchanges.

Teaching students how to debate respectfully and effectively on social media is more critical than ever.

Constructive dialogue not only strengthens critical thinking and communication skills but also promotes empathy and understanding. When students learn to articulate their viewpoints with civility, they create opportunities for meaningful discourse rather than fueling animosity. Respectful online debates empower them to stand up for their beliefs while valuing diverse perspectives.

Moreover, fostering these skills prepares students to navigate the digital world responsibly. By setting an example of thoughtful engagement, they can counteract the growing trend of toxic online behavior and contribute to a more positive and inclusive digital community.

What's the Problem?

Rampantly aggressive social media posts during the recent elections exemplify the nature of many online arguments. From children to adults, people often share their opinions openly on social networks but are offended when others disagree with them. They react with aggression or resort to personal attacks.

All involved seem to overlook the true issues, and all parties leave the conversation upset, learning nothing new about the topic and missing a powerful opportunity for debate to open our minds and elevate our thinking.

What's the Solution?

Our students may regularly debate or argue on social media, yet schools rarely afford them the opportunity to acquire respectful debate skills as part of the curriculum.

We need to transform the digital debating mindset and help students see debate as a vehicle to strengthen their intellect and character.

The way schools teach debate doesn’t align with how our students conduct arguments in real life. Traditionally, we teach them to debate by writing argumentative or persuasive essays.

While this is important, our digital learners need to engage in online debates.

They need the opportunity to draft shorter arguments to share with the public as well as practice in responding intelligently to those with opposing views. 

To teach kids how to debate on social media, focus on building critical thinking skills, promoting respectful communication, emphasizing fact-checking, understanding different perspectives, and setting clear boundaries on tone and language, while always prioritizing online safety and responsible engagement. 

Part I: Lay the Groundwork

Point 1: Rich debate keeps the conversation going, celebrates differences of opinions and perspectives, and values well-constructed arguments.

Point 2: All involved realize how a strong opponent opens their minds, challenges their beliefs, and improves their critical thinking skills. 

Point 3: Additionally, healthy debate fosters peace, promotes democracy, and builds community relationships.

Part II: Let the Debates Begin!

Step 1: Focus arguments with a specific claim.

Instruct students to jot down ten strong, evidence-supported belief statements or viewpoints. A warm-up may inspire ideas. Have them cross out any ideas that they are tied to emotionally, that they don’t care enough about, or that promote violence, hate, or discrimination.

Students choose one of the remaining statements as their topic for the online debate. Help them transform their statements into specific claims that focus their arguments.

Step 2: Outline six valid reasons.

With the class, detail the qualities of strong support. Students then outline a minimum of six reasons to support their claims based on these qualities and conduct a quick search of each reason to ensure its validity. They show a few peers their reasons and ask them to choose the three most persuasive and interesting before deciding on the three reasons they will include in their arguments.

Step 3: Survey people to gather insight and evidence.

Students create a survey with at least five questions to gather insight and evidence to support their claims and reasons. Help students draft clear, short, specific, and simple questions that will elicit meaningful feedback. Ask them to opt for multiple choice, open-ended, or ranking questions – and to avoid only yes/no questions.

Step 4: Post arguments and create counterarguments.

Students post their arguments in a designated online platform. Note that the idea isn’t to post a five-page argumentative essay with scholarly resources. Think of this as a precursor to these types of essays.

These online arguments should consist of three paragraphs or less in simple language, with logic, reasoning, and evidence. The idea is to spark debate, which means the arguments must appeal to their peers and be easy to digest. Your young debaters should begin to prepare their counterarguments.

Step 5: Counterargue and refute the counterarguments.

Once students post their arguments, other students post counterarguments. The counterarguments should challenge one or two ideas made by the author and provide reasoning and support for their contentions.

Writers should check the forum and refute all counterarguments. These counter-arguments must be respectful and address the contentions with well-thought-out reasoning.

Encourage students to concede on certain areas of agreement. The idea isn’t to win the argument, but to refine belief systems and values. Additionally, conceding on specific areas moves the conversation forward to debate other areas of the issue, which leads to a broader understanding of the topic.

Step 6: Introduce a troll.

After a few days of healthy debate, announce to the class that a troll has snuck into their forum in an effort to thwart their missions. Trolls are individuals who target an online group and post inflammatory or off-topic messages to provoke a reaction or start quarrels. The troll doesn’t want your students to gain the skills to promote healthy debate, because he wants them to join him in spreading chaos on the internet.

The troll joins the group for a day or two, and only after your students have engaged in healthy debate. Set up an account with the username "Troll" and wreak havoc in all threads so no one feels singled out. Your class troll will not name call, use inappropriate language, bully, or do anything that would hurt your relationship with your students.

Instead, the troll might make outrageous claims about the argument, post the same message multiple times, ask silly questions, or spam the thread with nonsense.

Step 7: Come up with strategies to end the troll's havoc.

Students must come up with strategies to effectively handle the troll and limit his destruction. Allow students to search the web for tips using the query “how to deal with trolls” and test these strategies.

Often, real-life trolls suffer from mental illness and the best way to deal with them is to limit engagement. Other tips include reporting them, blocking, and muting. Eventually, the troll gets bored and moves on to the next victim.

Step 8: Reconstruct arguments with new perspectives.

Students complete their final posts and highlight three or more peer statements that made them think deeply about their topics.

They should identify statements that incited them, challenged their thinking, pointed out ideas they didn’t address, directed them to interesting research, or introduced them to a new experience.

The students quote each peer’s statement and describe what they learned from it. Finally, they conclude their post by revisiting their initial stance and describing what has changed.

Part III: Online Platforms

Here are several online, dedicated debate and discussion platforms that may challenge both you and your students:

• Kialo: a platform designed specifically for structured debates. Users can participate in or create discussions that are broken down into pros and cons for clarity.

• ProCon: a platform that offers well-researched pro and con arguments on controversial topics. Users can explore diverse viewpoints in a structured manner.

• Reddit’s Change My View: according to the site, it’s “A place to post an opinion you accept may be flawed, in an effort to understand other perspectives on the issue.”

The Final Word

As educators, parents, and mentors, equipping young minds with these tools ensures they are not just participants in the digital conversation but active contributors to a more respectful and informed online culture. The future of digital communication depends on their ability to debate with both heart and reason.

Read More

• Miner, Micah. AI Goes to School
• Jennings, John. “Using Social Media to Inspire Classroom Debate.” iN Education, 5 Aug. 2024. 
• Sanchez Terrell, Shelly. Hacking Digital Learning Strategies: 10 Ways to Launch EdTech Missions in your Classroom.

The Teacher's Guide to Tech

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Mentoring the Mentors

While we all agree that it’s vital to have mentors helping new educators through their first turbulent years in the classroom, who’s mentoring the mentors?

Comment on The Cult of Pedagogy's X Post 

Read the Original Edutopia article 

Resources

• Hacking Digital Learning Strategies by Shelly Sanchez Terrell

• Image of angry man on computer by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels.

• Main image of students debating in class by Max Fischer from Pexels.

• Please note that some of the text was a blog post shared previously on our site that has been updated.

• Troll image by Alana Jordan from Pixabay.

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