FORMATION OF STUDENTS' ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA

Implementation of students' environmental education in the context of rapid economic and social development is one of the priority tasks of forming a society, which is impossible without the active participation of higher education institutions, as well as awareness of the need for environmentally friendly use of natural resources and a frugal attitude towards nature. Furthermore, students are the driving force that can influence the state of the environment in the future, so it is extremely important today to organize the educational process to familiarize children and youth with environmental issues. The basis for the implementation of an effective environmental education strategy is the maximum unification of efforts for an effective result based on the definition of reference positions in formal and non-formal environmental education, the formation of the child's ability to purposefully observe, study and correctly evaluate objects and phenomena in the process of observation from the point of view of environmental thinking. This article aims to identify the key features of forming environmental awareness in students through social media. Methodology. During this study, analytical and bibliographic methods were used to study the scientific literature on the development of environmental awareness, as well as synthesis, analysis of information, system-structural, comparative, logical, and linguistic methods, abstraction, idealization, induction, a deduction for studying and processing data, and a questionnaire survey conducted by the authors of the study online to practically clarify the most critical issues related to the formation of environmental awareness in students using social media. Results. The study identified the leading, most important theoretical aspects of the issue of environmental awareness, as well as the point of view of scientists and university professors on the critical aspects of this issue.