Social media offers new ways of online communication and learning. Especially sustainability topics are widely discussed and presented on online platforms like Twitter, Pinterest, and Twitch. Furthermore, social media has the potential to compensate learning differences because it facilitates informal learning. Education for sustainable development (ESD) is not only important in formal learning settings like schools or universities. Informal learning is also crucial to reach everyone in their lifelong learning processes in order to fulfill the 17 sustainable development goals set up by the UN as part of the Agenda 2030.

In our study, we investigate how and why young adults learn about sustainability topics in social media. There is a lack of instruments to research this relation. Therefore, designed a new quantitative survey instrument: the Social Media Usage on Sustainability (SMUS) scale. With our newly developed questionnaire, we investigate how young adults use social media regarding sustainability. It is the first instrument to research this connection. Additionally, we modified two existing scales, a shortened version of the SCQ-S (Gericke et al. 2019) and the SNSUN (Ali et al., 2020). The SCQ-S investigates the attitude, knowledge and behavior towards sustainability whereas the SNSUN researches the respondent’s media usage.

Here, we will present the first findings of a study with ~500 university students to validate the SMUS scale. Our newly developed scale showed a high reliability (Cronbach’s Alpha .928). We found the SMUS scale positively correlates with the SCQ-S and the SNSUN. The findings show that most of the respondents use the social media platforms Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. They often see posts on sustainability topics on social media but hardly re-post them or create content regarding sustainability by themselves. Its validation shows a good reliability and the correlation with other instruments related to Social Media are promising. We will further develop the scale in future studies to offer a valid and adequate ways to determine the relation of Social Media Usage and sustainability topics.

Ali, I., Danaee, M. & Firdaus, A. (2020). Social networking sites usage & needs scale (SNSUN): a new instrument for measuring social networking sites’ usage patterns and needs. Journal of Information and Telecommunication 4 (2), 151–174. doi:10.1080/24751839.2019.1675461 Gericke, N., Boeve-de Pauw, J., Berglund, T. & Olsson, D. (2019). The Sustainability Consciousness Questionnaire. The theoretical development and empirical validation of an evaluation instrument for stakeholders working with sustainable development. Sustainable Development 27 (1), 35–49. doi:10.1002/sd.1859