3 Tips for students avoiding social-media 'cliff-edge'
Key stage 2 is arguably one of the most stressful times before GCSE's that school children will face, in their academic career.
Having had the stress of sats and mock exams before the transition to high school they are faced with losing friends and being anxious about the move.
The new commissioners report suggest that along with this, social media becomes imperative to their everyday lives and children are constantly anxious to get the most likes on Instagram or Facebook and not understanding that these social platforms are just 'high light' reels of their friends lives.
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Three tips to combat to teach your students about social media
To combat this we are sharing with you 3 tips to include into your lessons so your pupils don't experience a social media 'cliff-edge' before graduating from primary to high school.
1. Incorporate lessons about social media algorithms so children understand why they see what they do on their news feeds on social media networks, and that the posts they see are targeted through different types of paid advertisement. (This information is freely available through the social networks themselves)
2. Try and encourage children to be themselves online, and still have the safety element such as never showing their house number or their school uniform in posts. Teach them about safety options operated by social media networks, what different privacy settings mean and how they can protect themselves online. These same basic principles and lessons can be transferred to online situations students might find themselves in very easily.
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3. Encourage children to recognise that the things posted by their peers on social media are highlights and they should believe everything that they see is authentic as some images are digitally edited. For example, Kim Kardashian doesn't really look like Kim Kardashian. Try showing images of digitally edited photos and the un altered image and ask children to decide which is authentic and which is not.
Also show children social media influencers who do not support digitally edited images online or in print.
Tell us how you're keeping your students clued up!
If you have any other ideas we'd be really interested to know how you plan to combat social media cliff edging! Get in touch, leave us a comment or share to a friend that needs to see this!