Teacher Makes Facebook Post Go Viral to Teach Students a Lesson in Social Media

By Lauren Boudreau 2 min read

One teacher in Queensland, Australia, is really taking her lesson plan to heart. The teacher, Paula Beare, wanted to show her kids the power of social media, and how once you post something online, it’s always there.

Assuming that her kids probably didn’t grasp the full extent of her warning, she set out on a mission to make one of her Facebook posts go viral to illustrate the power of the internet. Spoiler: It worked.

Beare posted a handwritten note to the social media site explaining she was doing an experiment for her class.

Her note reads: “I am a maths teacher and year 9 coordinator at a fantastic high school in Toowoomba, Australia. Next week I need to present to the year 9 students about cyber-safety and I wish to see how far this message will go based on my account’s security settings.”

Beare said she would track the reach of the post and make a mathematical diagram based on the results.

It currently has over 70,000 shares on Facebook and successfully reached this side of the globe.

“As a teacher you know that kids don’t want to be told, they want to be shown,” Beare told The Brisbane Times. “I’ve been able to show them through this post how something so small can turn into something huge. They just don’t know how far something will go and that applies to a public party invitation or if someone wants revenge because of a bad breakup. They need to think about the consequences.”