Social media, sustainability, and environmental protection in sustainable education

This paper focuses on the perceptions of sustainability and environmental protection expressed by the users of social networks (such as Facebook or WhatsApp). Forming the perception of climate change and environmental protection is a part of sustainable education. Social networks and Internet-based technologies might contribute to the process of gaining, processing and exchanging the information on sustainable development and to help to shape the social environmental awareness. Our results demonstrate that people who are familiar with the concept of sustainability consider environmental protection to be very important compared to those who are not familiar with this concept. In addition, it appears that people without any significant knowledge about sustainability are not interested in environmental protection. These outcomes suggest that sustainable education might help people in changing their perspectives and considering environmental protection to be essential for the future.