There’s been a truly creative explosion of language learning accounts on social media in the past couple of years. Every week I notice more and more content creators popping up, eager to share tips and tricks for learners of their language.

I’ve spotted some gems on Instagram lately, for instance. In Greek alone, I’m getting a lot from the regular postings of greeklearninghub, glossonauts, onlinegreek and greekwithdimitris (amongst many others).

But how best to engage with these feeds systematically as learning resources?

The problem is that they’re embedded in feeds that are meant to be fleeting. Watch, scroll, never see again. But when you spot a good one you’d like to spend more time with, there’s a feature that I only noticed recently – a little life-saver under my nose all along, that grabs them from the stream before they float away.

Story bookmarks!

Bookmarks SOS – Save Our Stories

In fact, it’s not just the bookmarks feature of social media apps that helps rescue these learning nuggets. Many platforms also have bookmark folders (TikTok calls them Collections), which means they can be organised by language, topic, or whatever else you like. 

Bookmarks organised into folders on Instagram

Once saved, you can set a time to go back over them – ideally scheduling it as a weekly tactic. Write down useful phrases, add them to Anki, or whatever else you find useful in your own learning.

It’s a tiny little hack, and one so obvious – it was under my nose the whole time – that it took me an age to start using it. But it’s a great way to catch those potted lessons before the social media deluge carries them away!