By Bianca Iboma-Emefu
The Rotary Club of Anthony Golden has called on stakeholders in education to enforce limits and boundaries for social media usage by secondary school students, as the excessive use of the online media was affecting their academic performance.
This was the position of the club secretary, George Nwibo, one of the facilitators at the basic education and literary campaign held at Ajao Estate Junior Secondary School, Anthony, Lagos, recently, with the theme: “Social media influence on the academic performance of secondary school students.”
Nwibo explained that spending several hours on social media has effects on the reading culture and performance of tudents, arguing, “social media addiction is a huge problem on students’ academic performance.”
He added that staying connected to global trends, making friends, and getting news as it breaks are all great aspects of social media, but who really knows the true impact it has on students academically?
“Internet poses a threat to our students, as they no longer read novels, playlets and poems in the traditional media, that is the book form. They do not enjoy the synch of the page anymore. They prefer to go online, not to read the e-copy of these books, but they are more interested in the snippets, summaries, than reading than whole book.”
According to him, the social media, which have become necessary and important, must be used by everyone who is alive, however, we must ensure our students do not get addicted to them.
He noted that it was a common practice to see students walking along the road, chatting, watching films and listening to music on phone with earpiece or headphone on, such that they get carried away, and advised that such trends must be discouraged.
“Addiction to use of social media, taking of selfies, have got so many students into trouble and fatal accidents. It should be a tool that would enhance our life and learning.”
Another facilitator at the event, Aniekan Udoh, said social media were distractions to students and could affect their grades negatively.
Udoh stressed the need for stakeholders to mount campaign for students to develop a strong bond with their books and also make conscious efforts to imbibe reading culture, while scaling down on the number of productive hours spent on social media.
He stressed that social media has negatively affected the intellectual ability of youths, noting ‘’we need to re-awake the reading culture among secondary school students because they are increasingly being caught up in the web-social media.
“The reading culture is gradually fading out. So, we want to revive it and stir it up in our schools. Students need to go back to reading culture to the extent that even when they buy anything wrap in old newspapers, they would read the paper in order to have an idea of what had happened in the past.
“The act of reading might stir up an interest to write something along that line, or any topic. Social media posses a threat not only to students but to everyone as it is time-consuming. Everyone should have interest in reading as no one can be a good writer without reading.
‘’Children today are growing up to a diet of social media. So, it is an inextricable part of their lives.’’