A Small Defense of Hashtags

This week, I kept thinking about the different types of knowledge discussed in Zgheib and Dabbagh’s (2020) article on Social Media Learning Activities: factual, conceptual, procedural, and metacognitive knowledge.

Some of them were easy to understand. Procedural knowledge appeared when students created something, such as a blog, podcast, or infographic. That made sense to me because making a final product requires students to learn not only the content, but also the process of organizing ideas, using tools, and producing something shareable.

Metacognitive knowledge also felt familiar. When I write a blog post, I first think about what I learned from the readings, connect it to what I already know, and then try to synthesize everything in my own words. Even revising my post makes me ask, “Is this really what I mean?” That process feels very metacognitive.

But the most interesting part for me was conceptual knowledge. Zgheib and Dabbagh noted that conceptual knowledge can be promoted through activities like using hashtags or linking to external resources. At first, I thought, “Hashtags? Really?” But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense.

People often call time on social networks “wasted time” or “useless scrolling.” But choosing a hashtag is not always random. When people tag something, they decide what larger category the post belongs to. They connect one idea to another.

I have seen friends use unexpected but strangely perfect hashtags and thought, “Wow, she’s clever.” A good hashtag can be funny, subtle, and conceptually accurate. So maybe hashtags deserve a little more respect. Sometimes, they are tiny signs of conceptual thinking.


References

Zgheib, G. E., & Dabbagh, N. (2020). Social Media Learning Activities (SMLA): Implications for Design. Online Learning (Newburyport, Mass.), 24(1), 50–66. https://doi.org/10.24059/olj.v24i1.1967

Comments

  1. Maria HJune 28, 2026 at 4:22 PM

    You've got a point. Never before this class had I used hashtags. Even now, I feel like I have not yet fully proceduralized the fact that I can and should use them for my posts on Instagram. It is not that I don't understand the concepts. I just sometimes feel ... like I'm getting old.

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  2. We're All Potatoes at HeartJune 28, 2026 at 6:40 PM

    I am one of those people who consider my time on social media a waste. I enjoyed reading the SMLA article, but many of the concepts were new to me, and I was unsure how I could apply them to my own understanding. I found it interesting that research said that the use of social media in the classroom was on the rise, but I couldn't think of a time in the last few years when this was the case for me.

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