Teachers participate in professional development activities to enhance their pedagogical knowledge and share best practices—and the increasing role of technologies in education, including social media, is shifting how this professional development occurs. The COVID-19 pandemic provided an opportunity to further consider the role of social media for professional learning. Using intensive longitudinal methods, we investigated 14 teachers’ use of social media both before and during the pandemic (n = 386 total responses). We found some general patterns in social media platforms uptake and their purposes, but teachers’ use of social media was largely idiosyncratic. Also, teachers demonstrated notable shifts in social media use after the pandemic started; multi-level models indicated that teachers were more likely to use social media to connect and share, especially, compared to before the pandemic. Higher levels of COVID-related stress were also associated with more use of social media for emotional and community benefits.

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