It’s no great surprise that many young people are using a lot of social networking apps these days. If your child has a smartphone, chances are the main thing they use it for is to go on sites like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Tik-Tok, and more. There are so many of these apps and they are only growing every day, but what is their real impact – on your individual child, on your family more generally, and on our society as a whole? Most would agree that there are pros and cons to these social networking apps, but just what kind of an effect are they really having on your child, and specifically on their performance at school?
Addiction
It is not too much to say that much of the usage of these apps is what we would refer to as an addiction. After all, it can get to the point where a child is practically unable to lift their nose from their screen for very long, certainly not for prolonged periods at a time. That is clearly a very dire situation to be in, and it really is a kind of addiction and one which we should all try to do away within society as best as we can. Of course, that might be a long process, but for now, it is worth making a point of viewing it this way, so that you and your family take it more seriously as the potential threat to mental health and good grades that it really can be.
The Effect On Grades
So is it really the case that social networking apps are causing low grades in school? As it happens, the answer might be yes. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that children who spend a lot of time on social networking sites find it harder to concentrate on specific tasks for long periods of time, are more likely to be easily distracted in class, and generally have shorter attention spans. All of that is of course bad news when it comes to trying to learn new information, and especially when it comes to preparing for exams and other important rites of passage at school. This is certainly going to have a negative effect on grades more generally, and it’s no wonder that so many parents are keen to try and do something to improve the situation.
The Solution
But no matter how bad it might look, the fact is that there are always things we can do to try and improve this. The main thing is to encourage your children to use social networking apps less and less, and that is something that you can do through a variety of means. One of the best ways is to simply use a parental control app like Family Orbit so that you can limit the amount of time your children can spend on their phones, and on specific apps too. Do that, and you might find that their grades improve before too long.