The world is growing at a very fast pace and most of our activities keep tilting towards the internet, particularly, the social media. While a lot of persons already know their way around the different social medial platforms on the internet, a lot of persons are still struggling to know how it works and how they can use it in a way that will benefit them. For the fact that the social media has now become a place where everyone is trying to be a part of, it is really a forward-thinking approach to inculcate it as a course to be studied in schools.
Dedicating a lesson to how to operate and navigate the social medial platforms will be helpful in so many ways. Those who take up this course will be more enlightened on how to use the social media better and wider. Sometimes, when I’m given a work to research on, due to my limited experience on the right words to search to find what I need, it makes it hard to make a broader research but then, if we are thought how to optimize our social media platforms, we can easily make researches and be more sure of how to filter the lies from the facts.
Basically, it will help high school students to be more prepared for handling a social media account better and give them more awareness of the things that the social media is meant for and likewise, it will help them to know the ethics of using the different social media platforms. As they say, knowledge is power, so it is safer for them to learn all that the social media, even the internet as a whole entails. Know when to apply their knowledge and also help them know when they are abusing the internet. They will be more careful about some certain things because they know better now that they have a formal knowledge about the internet/social media.
Personally, I will say the idea is a really good one but then, it will definitely come with some perks. On the aspect of those to teach these students, there might be some setbacks. Since the internet is evolving every now and then, some teachers might find it tiring to stay updated with the latest updates and this will affect what they teach to the students. They might want to start feeling biased towards some areas which won’t be good at all, as it might lead to inaccurate information being taught to the students.
Another downside of this would be the fact that, children will be exposed to more screen time because most of the things they have to do is on the internet. This would affect their eye sight and vision over time of not well managed. It will also affect their mental health overtime. Also, always having to be on your devices can become addictive and that might be a problem for some of the students. They will start finding it hard to know when to stop working on something on the internet and when to continue. They will always want to explore new ideas and techniques to do things better and that will be good but not when it’s done too much.
Lastly, another downside to having social media as a course is the evolution of social media. Day in and day out we see new updates and new features being added to different social media platforms and working with this might be hard for some teachers and this might end up defeating the purpose of this course. There might be a way out but it is only going to limit some areas and that in itself is also a downside. But overall, it is actually a good idea to educate people more on how to use the social media platforms more effectively and efficiently.
This is my response to the Hivelearners topic on ”SOCIAL MEDIA”.
Thanks for reading through. ❤️