Technology devices and social media as determinants of youth health and well-being: pre-service health education teachers interpret implications for their own practice

Abstract

Although traditional health education topics remain important areas to cover in school-based health education, new youth health priorities related to use of technology devices and to social media practices emerge as twenty-first century youth health and safety trends. In 2011, secondary pre-service teachers (PSTs; student teachers) held conversations with teenagers about important influences on and events in the young people's lives. The conversations provided a base for course assignments, which later became key data for the study reported here. One requirement of the assignment was that the PSTs write about their impressions of technology and social media use on young people's health and well-being, and based on their impressions, to predict implications for their own practices as future secondary health education teachers. These two major themes – how they might use technology in their own teaching practices in health education and their perceptions of health risks implicit in technology use that need to be included in school-based health education – are discussed here. Data were also examined for evidence of PSTs’ demonstrations of socially critical awareness of techno-devices and social media as social determinants of youth health.