The Case with the Scrolling Pandemic in Schools (Free Essay Sample)

How many hours do you spend per day on your phone? How many of those hours are spent on social media? How many of those social media hours take place at your workplace? You may have noticed that social media has become a distraction to you, but this distraction is even more detrimental to students. At school, students need to be able to focus on their work without having physical or mental distractions, such as phones. Of course, this is near impossible due to 78% of students having cell phones, but social media is a smaller category that can be contained. Although social media can engage students through sharing creativity, schools should not allow social media. Students constantly scrolling can cause them to get distracted from their schoolwork, become involved in dangerous situations, and damage their mental health.

Social media is one of the leading causes of students getting distracted from their work easily. One 17-year-student, Jessica, gave her experience with social media during exam week: “I tried to reduce the time I spent on social media because it felt quite distracting when you saw what other people were doing.” Jessica is not the only student who feels this way, many students have experienced declines in their performance due to distraction rates. Comparing students’ performance now, to how they performed when social media was not as active, you can see a steep decline over time. Hence, this fact means that eliminating social media in schools will cause their distraction levels to decrease and engagement levels to increase.

Another reason that social media should not be allowed in schools is that it can lead students to become involved in harmful situations. In a 2010 study conducted by The Cyberbullying Research Center, 20% of the student participants admitted to being victims of cyberbullying, and the same amount had admitted to administering cyberbullying on another individual. Other conducted studies have had percentages as high as 40%. This bullying is mainly directed at students, but can even be directed at teachers. This suggests that social media should not be allowed in schools because it gives students more time to be rude to others. If a student is checking their phone during class and reads a harmful message, it can distract them from their work and bring them into a hole of hopelessness that will make school difficult.

The last reason that students should avoid social media is that it can be severely damaging to mental health.  Jealousy and anxiety were reported by participants of Australia’s National Stress and Wellbeing Survey after finding out they were excluded through social media.

In addition to this survey, Doctor Mubarak Rahama reports that there is a very strong correlation between higher hours online and higher levels of depression, stress, and most damaging, a fear of missing out. This fear of missing out is absolutely real and activates students' anxiety, making them feel as though they are not enough. Since school is seven hours out of a student’s day, eliminating social media for those seven hours will reduce their levels of negative emotions. Even if it seems like students are happier when using social media, the effects it has on their real-life outweigh the temporary joy the cyber world gives students.

As stated, putting an end to social media in schools will solve many issues summoned within the school environment. Abolishing this will lessen distractions, decrease the risk of cyberbullying, and keep their mental and emotional state healthier. If we keep social media as prominent as it is in schools now, students’ brains will continue to fall until they are mindless robots, living for their media image only.