Social media can be integrated into religious educational processes in at least two ways. On the one hand, their content can become the subject of religious education and, on the other hand, the applications and platforms can become tools for religious educational processes. These educational processes can take place in the sense of lifelong learning in a formal, non-formal or non-formal, or informal framework.

Didactic religious change processes through social media

A high level of importance is assigned to digital media, especially in the area of ​​informal learning. Learners are through social media capable of personal learning networks which are either personal or collaborative.

Thinking and learning have changed in the digital age compared to the industrial age. It is network-like, multi-causal, and interactive. Personalized, intersubjective but also multi-perspective thinking is characterized by constant exchange and personal meaning formation. The learning is learner-centered, so to speak, are all working on the same subject, all of which are researchers.

Religious issues in the context of social media

In religious educational processes, the areas of tension “privacy and public”, “discretion and transparency”, and “relationship and superficiality.  Which, due to the nature of social media, go hand in hand with them, are negotiated in religious education. These areas of tension are based on theological and anthropological questions that allow the curriculum to be linked in many places.

Within social media, it is advisable to consider theological issues against the background of mediatization and to localize and interpret their transformation processes. Digital media are not only used as individual media, they rather lead to a cultural change as a whole. Religious educators can use webint to crawl data from numerous sources. Social media are a very impressive example of this.

Social media can be integrated into religious educational processes in a variety of ways. In principle, all offers and formats are available for this purpose. However, it makes sense to subject the tools to a precise analysis based on the one hand on the desired acquisition of competencies and on the other hand on the methodological and didactic considerations before they are selected for teaching processes.