Social Media's Influence on Policy Issues

          Early childhood professionals enacting positive social change benefit from the digital age, especially when leveraging social media. I would use two types of social media to communicate my policy issue. First I would include a micro-blog, such as Twitter. Twitter can be used to initiate campaigns and gain public support through brief messages. Second, I would choose to leverage Facebook by creating a page dedicated to early childhood mental health. Connecting with the general public, professionals in the medical field, and politicians would be beneficial for the policy issue. From here, private groups could be created to collaborate on specifics of the policy issue. 

Benefits & Challenges of Social Media

          One benefit of social media is the connection between users of social media. Social media has made it easier to introduce social issues, exchange opinions, and share news in real time to a wide audience (Hong, June, & Sung-Min, 2011). A challenge is ensuring my policy issue stands out and isn't lost in translation among the millions of content submissions in the social media scene. This is going to require networking and collaboration in order to be successful.