Impact of Social Media on Child’s Education & the Ways to Make it Positive

Technology rules the world today; from communication to education, almost everything is based on digitalization and with such level of digital dependency, you just can’t imagine kids staying away from digital devices and social networking. But is it completely normal and has no ill effect on our young ones?

Most school going kids spend some time on their devices, especially for playing online games and for communicating with friends through social networking platforms. Though, it is true that you cannot remove the presence of these new-age methods of communication, socialization, and entertainment; it is important that as a parent you need to understand where it can go wrong and how it can be stopped from affecting your kids in damaging ways.

Education is one of those areas, where technology plays a double role. It is both helpful as well as detrimental.

Below you have a list of damaging effects that excessive use of social media sites can have on your child’s education.

Tampered language skills – Use of Social Networking Lingua Franca

Language skills are a must for an overall development of any child. It not only occupies an important place during the kid’s childhood but also plays a vital role in one’s success during the adulthood. But as a result of excessive chatting, texting, and communication through the Internet based networking sites, kids almost lose their language skills. They either lose their command over grammar skills or develop really bad spellings due to the constant use of Internet slangs and shortened spellings.

Too Much of Socialization – Lack of Concentration in Studies

Kids, who have friends online, often feel the urge to communicate with their friends or they are allured by multi-player games. This keep them attracted to the networking sites that results in lack of concentration in studies. Kids spend all their time in surfing the Internet just to hang around these sites and give up doing homework, studying the lessons, and working on projects that their teachers assign as home assignments. Some go as extreme as neglecting their studies even before the examinations. This fetches them bad grades and makes them struggle in their education.

Damaging Addiction – Use of Digital Devices for Networking even when in Classroom

Though most schools don’t allow students to bring their devices inside the classroom; kids often carry them secretly and use them without the knowledge of their teachers. And in several other cases, kids misuse the devices that school provides them for educational reasons. This kind of misuse and addiction creates mayhem in classroom that then deviate the students from lecture taking and understanding what the teacher is teaching.

Soft Skills are Marred – Verbal Communication & Face to Face Socialization stays Under-Developed

Staying stuck to the cell phones and tablets for every single thing and communicating only through chatting mar the soft skills of the kids. As young, most kids hate verbal communication and continue talking through texting and chatting but as adults they realize their mistake as it is an essential part of career success.

This may sound depressing that technology is doing more harm than good to our kids; yet, there are ways to turn all harms into beneficiaries! All you have to do is be alert, vigilant, and instill better discipline in your kids.

Below, you have some steps that will help you keep your child digitally disciplined and more focused on education.

Introduce your Child to Informative and Education Related Social Sites

Kids of the day live on technology and breathe through the Internet. You cannot expect them to stop visiting any of the social media sites but for sure you can change their usage from useless ways to useful and more productive endeavor. There are numerous educative social sites and online entertainment hubs as well as gaming portals that encourage better learning and better education. Make sure your child uses at least a few of them. Introduce as many educative sites to your child as possible. This will keep your child entertained, happy and yet interested in studies.

Set Time Limits for Online socialization

Don’t let your child spend the whole day in interacting with the online friends or in the Internet based activities such as multi-player game playing and chatting. Set a special usage rule and make sure that your child follows the time limits that you’ve set. This will discourage the unnecessary addiction and encourage your child to devote more time in studies.

Closely Observe your Child’s Digital Activities

Kids often lie to their parents about their digital activities. They keep playing online games, chatting through the social chat messaging apps, text messaging, and Internet surfing and keep their parents in darkness. You may think that your child is studying; but, it can be just the other way around. Thus, it is important for you to closely watch what your child is doing.

Using a tracking technology is the best way to have complete idea about what your child is doing online or how he or she is using the device. This lets you know about each and every activity taking place on your child’s device. You even get to know about your child’s friends and their habits.By monitoring child social media activities, you will get to know when exactly your child sits down to do the homework and when exactly there is a massive chat or online game going on.