Social Media and Education Pros and Cons

In recent years social media has played an influential role in modern society, especially with children and teenagers. So much so that social media has been banned from many schools. Pupils are accessing social media during school hours and causing disruption to lessons. The whole social media revolution has many pros and cons, some of which I have listed below:-

Pros

• Raises student collaboration within a classroom and at home by having the ability to contact classroom peers regarding school projects, homework or help from each other.
• Encouragement of participation by pupils who do not participate regularly in the school environment, giving them the opportunity to express their thoughts through social media.
• Quick sharing of resources such as posting websites that are useful to pupils on a social media site.
• Useful for homework by requesting help via a social media site.
• Involves all parties i.e. the parent, teacher and pupil.

Cons

• Distraction during lessons.
• Can be abused for personal interactions such as general chat.
• Cyber bullying.
• Decrease human interaction within a classroom.
• Difficulty in monitoring the content being posted which can lead to appearance of innapropriate content that could be offensive to other users.