Social media and teenagers is often a sour topic, and for a somewhat reasonable reason. Because of it, it, its a no-brainer that most schools are also against it. Although, often times students tend to ignore their schools and use social media in it's abundance anyways, despite the many warnings against doing so. Though, as a student myself who, in my own opinion, isn't overly involved with social media, I feel that this is a gap that schools need to start to bridge if they would like to make progress with students and their levels of education.
Of course, there are already schools who have started to use social media to bridge gaps and form communities. These are also the schools who have seen the benefits of social media, using it as a tool to form communities and seeing it as a tool that empowers it's students. Although, this hasn't done much to change the minds of a lot of teachers, many still against the system and not utilizing it. There are also still many reasons to as it is a big distraction for students in class, and many teachers opting to take a more old fashioned approach with traditional pen and paper teaching.
Social media creates and kindles friendships beyond school walls, and creates more defined friendships between students. Although, with the top social media platform for most teenagers being Snapchat and Instagram, it often seems like a wall of privacy that teachers can't breach, as most sensible students would simply block any teacher who tried to add them. Though, I feel this can be changed through a slight change of approach.
Social media has become so intertwined with our daily lives, it boggles me as to why it's not presented as such and is treated as a waste of time when realistically it's what everyone does. This is where my core idea comes from; this idea of presentation. I feel that if schools presented social media as an accepted part of the students lives, then there wouldn't be such push back. I feel it would make it a more open loop than it is already, allowing teachers to get a glimpse of the world a lot of kids take refuge to. It could open these ideas of cyber bulling and classmate drama to the school, allowing them to take action.
Now, you may think 'well it can't be that simple,' but the fact of the matter is that it is. What a lot of people really need to open up and show others is just this idea of normalcy, and almost an acceptance of what normal is. Yes, students know that all of their teachers use social media as well, but the amount of push back makes it very hard for those kids to understand this normalcy. If teachers allowed kids to open up, then maybe we could all see the push back we get.
Citations
Students on Social Media. ABA, 11 July 2018, abaforlawstudents.com/2018/07/11/
law-students-social-media-do-they-mix/. Accessed 16 Dec. 2019.
Wade, Lori. "How Social Media is Reshaping Today's Education System."
Georgetown University Center for Social Impact Communication, Georgetown
University, csic.georgetown.edu/magazine/
social-media-reshaping-todays-education-system/. Accessed 16 Dec. 2019.
