Social Media: The Tool for Connection by Ismael

Social Media: The Tool for Connection by Ismael - March 2022 Scholarship Essay

Every day I wake up and go to the school bus at 6:25 A.M. I sit in classes for subjects I could genuinely care less about but impact my future. I struggle with them because I have no interest in them. I want some way to distract myself from numbers and manipulating equations. I think I need an outlet. I need connections to other people. I want to describe how I’m feeling. I want to see art and content that people created that I enjoy making myself forget what I experienced at school every day and see people that go through the same things I do every day.
It can be something as simple as people liking the same video game I like and talking about an annoying NPC. To something as complex as political issues and beliefs that I align with. The lure of social media to me is the way it can offer more diversity and tolerance much more than my real life can.
I see a meme that’s relatable and makes me laugh. I see another and another and another and tell myself I don’t need to account for how much time has passed since I’ve focused on school or even completed an assignment. “I don’t need to do my homework I need to be happy” Days pass by as I miss more assignments. I quickly catch myself before I fall and land onto an acceptable grade by my standards.
I understand those missing assignments and wasting my time on social media should be seen as a vice that destroys my future. At the same time, it helps me build a future because it allows me to dream. I live in a town where a lot of people stay after high school. They either start families and get themselves into debt with home loans, die due to drug overdoses, or work dead-end factory jobs and get by each month with little invested into their future.
Social Media connects me with people with stories like mine with underfunded schools, little diversity, and large amounts of ignorance. I was able to visualize life and a way to pay for college that wasn’t through student loans and debt. I was scared of going through college because of costs. Social Media has connected me with multiple scholarships, organizations, and leaders that have helped me apply for college, scholarships, and resource fairs. I learned about this scholarship through social media.
Social Media had a lot of negative effects on my education due to me glamorizing my life and living in a fake world through social media. At the same time, I was able to use it to my advantage and connect myself through social media and seeing multiple scholarship offers and different career pathways.
It can be addictive, distract, and numb people to human emotions. All these negative traits let students become lethargic. The main advantage of social media is the way it can connect people. It connects people through a larger network and can have a large effect on secondary education.
I listed how social media connected me to multiple scholarships and ways to navigate college as a high school senior. College students use social media to benefit their education as well. They use social media to connect with brands to become campus ambassadors and help pay for their tuition and other needs. College students use social media to help decide what classes to take using the application called Rate My Professor. Other students evaluate their professors and rate their professors on the app. This helps students stay away from professors who are lazy, rude, or confusing. Professors use social media to connect with students who they feel deserve their time and attention outside of class and let them know of opportunities on campus, external job positions, or other people in their field.
We can’t forget about the people who stay in high school after our 4 years are finished. Teachers use social media to connect with students after high school but also to spread their messages. When teachers were underpaid across the nation, they used social media to promote a statewide protest using the hashtag RedforEd. This helped spread their cause all the way to state capitals, and across multiple state lines.
Social Media can be dangerous for students’ education if they abuse it. It is also a tool to connect with others and opportunities. The advantages it has for students for scholarships and such don’t end there. When teachers use social media to promote better education and classrooms students benefit from that as well. Social Media is a tool for communication at the end of the day, the effects and influence it has on education lie with people who sit in the classrooms every day whether they be teaching or learning.