Social Media: An Educational Supplement of the Future by Arav

Social Media: An Educational Supplement of the Future by Arav - March 2022 Scholarship Essay

I didn’t have Instagram and Snapchat accounts until I reached my freshman year of high school, an age far too old by some standards. Immediately, I was flooded with a wide variety of content, posts I both cared for and those that I felt indifferent towards. As I “liked” more and more posts, my social media feed began to remove the content seemingly irrelevant to me. This concept isn’t new or surprising, but its implications with education are.
Social media has brought content to our fingertips. Education that used to be limited to the confines of a classroom, a teacher, and a textbook is now accessible from virtually anywhere at any time. Undoubtedly, this brings benefits for the education system. Teachers are superheroes, but they don’t have the means of being everywhere at once to provide each student with detailed attention, especially with the small class periods that high school teachers are given. Widely expanding the scope of education through social media has allowed students, like myself, to take full control of their education. Quantum mechanics, for example, is a topic rarely explored in the K-12 system, but social media, such as short, informative TikTok videos, have made it possible to explore such topics and differentiate my interests towards my career.
The idea of having short, attention-catching videos or images also highlights the strengths that social media integrated with education brings. Each student has a unique learning style, and many students learn best when information is presented beyond grayscale texts and passages. In the “likes”-oriented digital universe with short character limits, social media content creators rely on eye-catching animations, concise information, and unique, creative examples in order to make their information resonate with viewers. Having an incentive such as “likes” has the positive effect of reformatting information into something digestible and enjoyable for learners.
However, in order to become truly effective for education, social media does have some hurdles it needs to overcome. Many subjects, such as politics, are open ended, prone to bias, and require a deep dive exploration of multiple sources in order to discover a concrete answer. With enough effort, it is possible to discover this answer. However, social media algorithms flood our faces with content that reinforces what we already believe rather than present information that could potentially cause us to reevaluate our views. Political information is skewed and in order to gain likes, creators often feed off the fears and anxieties through unproven claims that people end up valuing as the truth.
Essentially, social media can become a spark to a wildfire, as presenting skewed information can cause brutal, unsympathetic arguments between individuals online. Information and education can easily become an interaction where the loudest voice heard over the crowd becomes the majority opinion, whether it is factual or not.
But perhaps most importantly, social media has brought the world closer through education. Individuals who had access to limited resources now have the most important gamechanger: opportunity. Social media makes education accessible and connected, so exploring involved topics like global politics becomes an open discussion capable of incorporating multiple viewpoints and cultures. While traditional education cannot be completely replaced, social media is a viable supplement that should be further integrated and welcomed into our lives, but with the awareness of the possible negative consequences that can occur.