In this day and age, social media is the most common platform every one of us use to communicate and interact with one another; It serves as a way for us to stay in touch with our friends, families, and various communities. More so, businesses nowadays utilize social media applications to market and promote their products and track customer concerns.
However, it seems like it’s turning into a contagious disease as people overuse social media and they behave out of control. Thus, we are in search of an antidote which can act as a treatment to the troubles and confusions social media could cause if used wrongfully.
According to research made by Sprout Social, 29.3% of social media users are included in the 13-24 age bracket which we can consider as the youth of today. They are the ones active in having discourses online about various topics that are widespread on the internet. Due to having conflicting arguments, some of them reached the extent of throwing hate comments at each other, thus the term “cancel culture” became prominent on the internet.
Because of the prevailing problems regarding the use of social media, there should be people who would moderate the toxic social media interaction of people and a good example for that are the teachers. Teachers, as cliché as it could be, are students’ second parents and they would want to teach the students what’s best for them. In fact, social netiquette is a part of the curriculum in which students are taught what are the do’s and don’ts when interacting with random people over the internet. On the other hand, students just take for granted the words of wisdom their teachers impart to them as they always have the urge to post hateful comments towards a certain person.
Another dominant issue concerning social media use is the uncontrollable spread of fake news. Some people see social media as a platform to perform their fraudulent activities as most social media users are people of young age and tend to believe easily from what they read over the internet. Teachers could be also helpful to control this problem by teaching the students how to identify credible sources and trustworthy sites to prevent the spread of confusing posts that can cause trouble to several people.
There are also other ways on how teachers could promote a positive online environment. One of those is by utilizing social applications that are famous to youths such as Twitter and TikTok. On Twitter, teachers can use its new feature called “Twitter Space” in which they can talk about meaningful topics like having a podcast session but people can listen to them in real-time. On the other hand, one of the most used social media applications nowadays is TikTok. Based from DepEd Memo, dated November 2021, thru ICTS-EdTech Unit, school public teachers were encouraged to attend a webinar regarding the use of TikTok application as educational platform. With that, they can create and post educational video contents successfully.
As Jose Rizal titled his first novel “Noli Me Tangere”, it translates to “The Social Cancer.” He referred the term to the Spaniards who oppressed his countrymen in his time. In our modern world, it can be said that social cancers can now be found all over the internet. Trolls and frauds are dominant throughout different social platforms. Nevertheless, we have our teachers that will serve as guides to cure the unhealthy social environment and make it safe for the hopes of the nation that are being slaves of social media.
By: Charis N. Alfanta | Teacher I | BNHS-JHS
