WHAT YOU CAN DO:
1. Give your students ten minutes at the beginning of class, twice a month or as needed, to go through their social media apps and unfollow people who are not adding to their life or mental health in a positive way. 2. Promote autonomy by giving students a quick, scientifically based summary of what they need to know: see the social issues tab for a accessible description of your brain's addiction to social media. Empower students to use technology instead of it using them.
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Teachers should be empowering and enlightening for adolescents to know that the websites that they brag about being on for four hours a day were formulated with an exact science to keep them scrolling and gain their addiction. For example, psychologists were involved with Facebook from the beginning, and utilized our natural dopamine loop to gain our addiction to Facebook. Instagram with it’s likes and comments works much in the same way. The findings of the study indicated addiction like patterns in MRI scans and established that some of the addiction patterns resemble those of gambling (Miah, 2013). The difference is that there is a lack of control over the inhibitory control system (Miah, 2013). Our website will have a tab on critical media literacy which also details a quick summary of this article so that educators can let adolescents know the inner workings of the science behind the addiction to social media. Adolescents need to know this and hopefully it will shape their view of the time they spend on these platforms, knowing the goal of the companies is to deepen their own pockets. This is why adolescents, and all consumers need to be mindful of what they personally hope to get out of a given platform instead of letting the experience be driven by the creators and their vested interests.
Researchers found that adolescents spend about four hours a day on social media, for seven days a week using a questionnaire that was distributed to almost 600 students at school in Louisiana from 11-18 years old (Turel et. al, 2014). Furthermore, only 11% are using it for schoolwork and 16% felt social media was helping them and that they were using it too much (Turel et. al, 2014). This ties into the class lecture in which 24% of students felt that social media was hurting them. As a result, the article suggested banning social media at school so that adolescents could focus more on school (Turel et. al, 2014). However, this is a rather unrealistic solution to a problem that could be addressed by equipping educators to prepare adolescents for the challenges of social media and technology. Additionally, the proposed solution only addresses the academic issues that arise from technology. Surely, cyberbullying and adverse impacts on well-being need to be taken in consideration and addressed by educators. An alternative to other forms of social media is edmodo which is an education based social media platform that teachers can use to connect with students, but also inform educators of the dangers of cyberbullying. We recommend the research based practice of creating a socioemotional environment in the classroom to deal with issues like bullying. Morning meetings can be a way to naturally integrate socioemotional development into the curriculum.
In terms of adolescent development, several theories highlight the importance of adolescence being a time to form one’s identity (Barth, 2014). Phones can aid in this individualization by letting adolescents form strong bonds outside of their family (e.g., with friends), but can also hinder this development (e.g., phone as an umbilical cord). Another way in which technology impacts development is that adolescents seem to be more well versed in political and social issued from a younger age (e.g., I did was not yet aware of the importance of voting when I was 13, however now adolescents are politically outspoken and using whatever platform they have to speak out, and often attend protests). On the other hand, managing feelings is hard without the frontal cortex being fully developed and verbal and intellectual skills are suffering (e.g., less experience with face to face interaction, avoiding phone calls and resorting to texting).
Besides Educators implanting research-based practices, critical media literacy is a way in which adolescents themselves can keep things in check. In my personal experience, I have seen that social media has taken the need to fit in to a whole new level. Many have claimed that the education system thwarts creativity and much like a factory, aims to produce one type of ideal person. Social media, is in many ways similar in its creation of social norms. For example, girls on Instagram see that posts of women with “x” body type, wearing “y” brand, and holding a coffee from “z” shop get the most likes and I have seen girls as young as 12 emulating this ideal along with their group of friends. Individuality is nonexistent, and from my personal experience, girls are acting older and older at younger and younger ages over time. This was not an intended consequence of social media (from the consumers perspective anyway, the advertisers probably don’t mind) and this consequence can thwart individuality and create insecurities surrounding body image etc. Adolescents, through a different form of critical medial literacy, need to understand that they are consuming unrealistic, photo shopped, perfectly posed highlights of a person’s life.
As we learned in class, 24% of folks feel social media has a mostly negative effect. Specifically, top concerns were bullying, rumor spreading, lack of in person interaction, and gaining an unrealistic view of others’ lives. Research has also linked aggression to media violence due to its desensitizing effects and creation of mean-world beliefs (Shaffer, 2009). We also went over in lecture, that images of sexually explicit content in media lead to earlier sexual behavior despite schools only teaching abstinence in sex-ed. This is an example of a misalignment in research and implementation in schools that could be improved with the use of research-based practices. This is why it is important that we inform and provide resources for Educators to adjust accordingly. Furthermore, we discussed in class that the sexualization of women in media leads to eating disorders, depression and low self-esteem much in the same way that the ideal body imagery that we are bombarded with in media does.
Society is constantly pumping out new technology every day and this technology is an
integral part of our lives, and the lives of adolescents. Technology has paved the way for various advancements from making certain medical treatments possible, to simply being able to connect with people all over the world. However, with the fast rate at which new technology is being integrated into everyday life, people often do not stop to think about any negative impacts that may come along with the benefits. Technology is treated as a given in our lives, rather than a tool that we have power over, to choose how it can best serve us. For example, in theory having access to the internet should serve you by allowing you to find answers to questions easily, but instead, people spend hours surfing the web, consuming content that they never set out to consume. Similarly, Instagram, a common app of choice for adolescents, was made presumably to share memories with friends and family, and yet it is expected that you follow famous celebrities and Instagram models that you have never met. As a result, adolescents often end up using Instagram as a place to come and feel down about their lives and or bodies. In both of these cases, people are not stopping to think about how the technology can best serve them, and are instead letting the technology use them (e.g., diverting time from priorities by surfing the internet or absorbing the societal standard of beauty that advertising companies are pushing via Instagram). Technology is powerful, and can make our lives easier, more efficient, and advanced, but it can also create problems that are unnecessary if we don’t stop and think about how we want to use technology, mindfully. Technology isn’t going anywhere, it’s only growing, and so it is important for educators of adolescents, and adolescents themselves to be aware of possible negative impacts. Educators can accomplish this through reviewing relevant research regarding the impact of technology on adolescents. |
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