Social media for sustainability education: gaining knowledge and skills into actions for sustainable living

Today, social media has been taking an increasingly expansive, invasive, and persuasive role in shaping the individuals' - and hence - the families' and society's behavior, actions, habits, consumption, and production patterns. This paper presents findings from a study focusing on developing a strategy to change people's behavior towards sustainability and turn them into actions by utilizing education for sustainability, pervasive design, digital media, and gamification concepts and methods. To this end, first, a survey is conducted to understand the current knowledge, awareness, and responses of a representative segment of society in Doha, Qatar on sustainability issues, concerns, and problems. Second, a social experiment is performed through a social media account in order to increase people's knowledge, awareness, skills, and actions for sustainable living. Finally, a follow-up survey is performed to assess and understand the outcomes of the social experiment (Instagram account campaign) among its followers. This study aims to learn the effectiveness of the proposed social media experiment for a sustainable lifestyle in Qatar among college-level educated young adults. In conclusion, following the social media campaign, the results show that 49% of followers learned more about sustainable living and 25% developed at least one sustainable habit in two months. Thus, this study demonstrates the potential of using social media, persuasive design, and sustainability education concepts and methods to change people's behavior into sustainable actions to achieve a more sustainable living, society, and world.