PRO: Social media is part of today’s technology, so embrace it

Social media should be integrated into the school curriculum. As the world around us grows, so does social media. Platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube are extremely popular apps used by teens.

As teenagers already have the constant urge to check social media, doing it in an educational way would be a good way to keep students engaged while also allowing cell phones for a productive use.

In the classroom, these platforms can be applied towards group projects, experiments, and online lessons. For example, on YouTube, many teachers will post or attach lessons from other teachers or organizations across the U.S to teach lessons a student may be struggling with.

These videos are also a good way for students to learn from someone other than their teachers and to hear things explained in different ways.

In English classes at JC, many if not all teachers provide students with helpful YouTube videos from “Coach Hall Writes” and “Garden of English.” They offer advice on essentials that will benefit students when taking exams and finals.

This is helpful because these videos provide students with confidence in their work that they may not have had before watching the videos.

In history classes, projects often include creating videos and playlists that must be uploaded. Both TikTok and YouTube can help students with these projects because it allows for easy and creative ways for students to create videos as well as edit and add features to them.

Many teachers at JC have their own YouTube accounts to help their students learn such as Math Teacher Courtney Von Lange and Science Teacher Andrew Ketchum.

Teachers can also allow students to get more involved in subjects if teachers create challenges and trends through TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. Students can create book reviews, reenactments, and experiments.

In World Language classes, pronunciation can be difficult, and many students are more audio-visual learners.  At JC, some teachers will put videos of individuals who provide very in-depth pronunciation of words, sentences, or phrases. To make this easier, students could have access to these videos themselves without restrictions.

Although Duolingo is not a social media app, this app allows students to study and review their language. Duolingo is a useful tool that teenagers around the world use and is a fun way to learn as they can keep streaks and compete with friends.

Many social media platforms including TikTok, Instagram, and specific channels on YouTube are blocked by admin here at JC. If teachers provide individual work where we must watch videos or read an article from a source that was posted to social media, we are unable to as we have been restricted access to these apps.

Social media in classrooms is extremely helpful because it provides students with a wide range of sources. This can be primary, secondary, and more. A perfect example is how Holocaust survivors have been posting and telling their stories to allows younger generations to be made more aware.

These types of information can be used in history and English classes in addition to other content areas.

Social media allows teachers to be more creative with their assignments. This could be creating a social media profile for a character in a book or from a past president.

Social media within the classroom is also beneficial because on both Instagram and Tik Tok, teachers post fun and catchy videos that provide ways of memorizing formulas, vocabulary, and much more.  – Kira Jenkins

CON: Keep social media out of classroom technology

The cons of having social media in classrooms outweigh the pros.

Phones have been a hot topic here at John Carroll with the rules seeming to change yearly and get stricter. This is a much-needed change that has happened and is still being enforced.

At JC, students are supposed to keep their phones in their lockers throughout the day and are only allowed to be used outside of the academic wing. However, they are allowed to have their computers in every class.

Technology like computers and phones is a huge distraction in classrooms, with kids not paying attention because they are playing a game or scrolling on social media. There is no learning when this is going on, meaning that no student or teacher is gaining a benefit from the class.

Not only are they distractions, but they are used as shortcuts as technology continues to advance. Now that we have AI especially, kids just try to cruise through schools and are getting caught using it instead of truly doing the work themselves.

Even though certain websites are blocked by the school, students still find any way to get around them like using hotspots, or VPNs.

Also, with technology comes many technological errors. With so many people being on one Wi-Fi, things move very slowly, and sometimes things don’t work or save, and it’s an endless cycle of frustration.

There is no reason to throw in more distractions with adding social media apps into the classroom.

With technological errors, cyber-security risks are higher, especially when a bunch of teenagers are left to use expensive equipment, leading to lots of students’ personal information getting leaked and bringing in lots of computer viruses.

Going off expensive equipment, technology isn’t cheap and has to be replaced frequently especially when broken, cracked, or dropped.

Some people also don’t learn the best through technology, and nowadays it’s taking over education. Whereas everything used to be on paper, it is now digital which can affect how students perform in the classroom.

As a community, and even this generation in general, has gotten too comfortable and dependent on technology. This is a problem because when kids grow up and are off on their own, they aren’t going to know how to deal with things or how to work through struggles. After all, we breeze by with technology.

Excessive use of technology can lead to health issues, including eye strain. It isn’t good to have a student sitting behind a laptop for seven hours a day on top of the time that teenagers already spend on their phones.

Technology makes it a lot harder to focus for not only students but teachers as well, making the workplace more challenging to control when students are multitasking or preoccupied.

Students are so attached to technology these days that even if you enforce rules in schools to lessen the use of it, students will find any way possible around it because we have become so dependent on technology. It is slowly becoming more and more of a problem that is hard to see when you do it as well.  – Grace Marchetti