Social media’s impact on your child’s education.

The impact of fast paced living and social media on your child’s education.

Social media’s impact on your child’s education. I believe that the main reason why children today are struggling with education and getting lower grades than ever before is due to the fast-paced world that they are living in such as Social Media and because of all the distractions that the world offers.

What impact does Social Media have on your child and their education ?

Throughout my tutoring days I have seen that the majority of children these days don’t value learning new skills from working hard and gaining knowledge from reading books, because they have access to instant information from the world wide web at their fingertips. So why study when you can ask google what the answer is? And why teach your brain how to think and solve complex maths and science problems when google can solve it for you in a fraction of the time?

I have also seen that this generation are so used to the fast-paced culture that they are unable to sit down and to focus on a task at hand. They feel the need to be busy all the time, but being busy does not mean that you are being productive. They are distracted by all their electronic devices which is competing for their attention all the time and instead of doing their homework and focusing on their life goals and dreams they are busy on their devices.

I believe that this is a dilemma that we are facing in this century, because if you ask any child to choose between doing their homework or using Tik Tok to make a video, they will choose the latter. If by some chance you haven’t heard of Tik Tok, it’s an app that allows users to share short videos of themselves and their friends dancing, singing, and lip-syncing.

Tik Tok now has about 2 billion downloads and this is just one of the many Social Media platforms available. Other Social Media platforms available are Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, YouTube etc. and all of these social media platforms are competing for your child’s attention.

The reason why the Social Media companies are so effective at getting your child’s attention is because when a user uses a platform like Facebook, a hormone named Dopamine is released in the reward path way when your child gets a like or a thumbs up from another child and that gives your child a sense of value and this makes them feel good, which leads to them wanting more of it and consequently getting addicted to Social Media in the long run.

Therefore, the question parents should ask their children are; “How much of your life do you give to Social Media sites and is It worth it?”. The parents should also ask themselves the same question, because a lot of parents themselves are addicted to their devices and instead of helping their kids with their homework and interacting with them socially they are also scrolling through their Social Media sites.

So, I believe that there is a solution to this dilemma, but that every parent should take the responsibility to protect their child against these Social Media platforms by not allowing your child to have too much screen time in a day and not to allow devices in their bedrooms after a fixed time every night. By doing this your child will have more time to connect with you and to work on their own goals and dreams. They will achieve better grades, be more motivated and have healthier relationships.

Author | Marco Van Der Westhuizen