How “Pause2MAP” Compares
A Curriculum Review | MediaEd Insights | Pause2MAP Edition | April 2026
Written by Lucas Jacob
Luke Jacob reviewed Common Sense Media and other wellbeing curriculum and concluded why Pause2MAP is different in its holistic approach.
As I watched Middle School students and their parents progress through consecutive exercises during our first Pause2MAP family workshop, I was struck by how powerful that concept of progression was. A discussion of a certain emotion during a “Manage” exercise might, during a subsequent “Analyze” discussion, lead to a family member naming possible causes for that emotional response. Or, during a “Participate” activity, a key “Analyze” question might guide a family’s decisions about how to respond to a sample post.
One of the most powerful aspects of the Pause2MAP framework is simply that it is a framework: it connects dozens of key topics and questions via a hierarchical structure that can both streamline conversation and expand initial wonderings into broader understandings. This is not as paradoxical as it might sound. On the one hand, a student, teacher, or parent who wants to delve into some single social media topic–say, authorship on social media platforms–can zoom in on that topic without becoming overwhelmed by all of the other (equally important) aspects of social media experiences. On the other hand, someone who enters the framework through a specific lens like authorship, and who wants to consider how authorship connects with other aspects of online experiences, will find specific points of connection to topics ranging from platform design to audience to app-specific user behaviors.
A framework provides both context and direction, and this allows for a huge topic like social media to feel less daunting.
Over my decades in PK-12 schools, I have seen great strides in the free-access materials available in the arena of social media education. For one example, over the past few years, Common Sense Education has vastly improved its lessons and exercises related to social media. I have previewed literally hundreds of such items, and I am grateful to know how many opportunities they provide for rich classroom experiences. I have seen a corresponding increase in the stated desire for such education, from both schools and families. I am not exaggerating when I say that during every PK-12 campus visit I have undertaken in the past four years, I have been asked about this topic.
And yet I have not seen a commensurate uptick in formal social media education, to match the increase in materials/resources and the growing thirst for such learning. One reason for this is that schools don’t have existing structures for this kind of study, as they do for mathematics, science, history, language arts, etc. Plus, as good as many available materials are, they are not embedded in clear pedagogical structures. Among the most common questions that have come my way: “Where do we start?” and “How do we start?” Educators, parents, and students are ready to dig in, and are hungry for direction.
That’s what Pause2MAP is for: to provide a roadmap (forgive us the pun in the framework’s name), or more accurately a menu of possible roadmaps from which a school or district or individual teacher can select, to give shape to what might otherwise feel like a shapeless journey.
Pause2MAP owes its design to another of the most powerful aspects of the project: it has been created not by educators alone, counselors alone, or scholars alone, but by a team representing more than 70 years’ worth of collective experience in all three arenas. Conceived with wellness as its guiding principle, it has been shaped by expertise in pedagogy and practice, and refined by up-to-the-moment research-based scholarship.
Among the many privileges of my career to date are these three: I have worked in visionary schools for 30 years; I have partnered closely with wellness/counseling teams for more than 20 of those years; and for more than a decade I have been welcomed into the community of media literacy scholars across the country and around the world. I have come to understand just how much any of us in any of those three arenas relies on the professionals in the other two, and I have dedicated myself to Pause2MAP specifically because all three arenas are represented by consummate professionals.
That’s what we mean when we call Pause2MAP holistic: both that it provides an overarching structure to give shape to the many vital topics involved in social media education, and that it has been designed–and is constantly refined– at the intersection of wellness, educational best practices, and thorough research.
MediaEd Insights - April 2026 - Pause2MAP
Opening Essay: The Waiting Game Isn't Enough: A Plea for Proactive Digital Wellness by Michelle Hirschy
Case Study: Student-Led Media Literacy Legislation in California by Elise Choi
Curriculum Review: How Pause2MAP Compares by Lucas Jacob
Research Brief: Wait Until 8th?: Mothers' decision-making and management of children's smartphones in the United States by Susannah Stern
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