The culture of Social Media
During the last month I started to work
as an EFL teacher with a group of teens. They are truly full of potential and
dreams. More than ever these young generations have been immersed into the social
media culture, this includes a broad variety of apps and sites where a person
can share everything, everywhere and at any time.
I believe this is a culture, and as
every culture in the world has “a big effect on psychology” Social Media has
certain rules. Social media creates ought selves that are irrational like you
should have more than 300 likes to be acceptable, but if you have 1000+ likes then
you are pretty, what happens with those who have less than 10 likes?
My students face this irrational
culturally- created ought selves and it doesn’t match with who they really are.
Many teens, as we learn from the video in this blog, suffer from low self esteem
as a result of this Social Media culture. As a TESOL teacher I’m a witness of
how much this affects their learning process and enthusiasm. It makes them feel
lonely and uncapable to learn and teach others.
I’m not saying Social Media is bad
and devilish, but as with any culture we need to question what we want to take
and what we want to ignore. TESOL teachers, especially those who work with
teens I would said we need to teach our students about culturally-created ought
selves. They need skills to question and compare cultural biases.
More on culturally- created ought selves
What is beauty? Concepts are
different all over the world. “La flor más bella del ejido” is a beauty contest
that happens once a year in Xochimilco, Mexico.
This beauty pageant is an example
of how culturally-created ought selves vary all over the globe. The “typical” beauty
would not fit in this contest. But again, is this beauty? How can we know that?
I believe beyond beauty contest we
all need to accept that each person has unique, distinctive physical
characteristics. We may never get to have an exact description of beauty and we
shouldn’t because there is not such a thing as an exact type of person and…
“life
is too short and too precious to be miserable due to irrational,
culturally-created, artificial ought selves”
-John Ives
Undoubtedly, the external influence our young people receive is so strong. It seems that there is no way to stop these currents as are social networks. Young people apparently live waiting to be accepted to feel better. These signals put us on alert both parents and teachers to work more self-esteem of them.
ReplyDeleteOh my gosh ! What a wonderful post and videos Rebeca. Right on! You have brought a very important point to our discussion. Just recently , our loving prophet has challenged the youth to go 7 days without social media in order to evaluate their time better and see how much they are missing when they spend so much time online . Social media is enticing , can become addictive and many times show false images and concepts.
ReplyDeleteWow. This was the best post that I read in this TESOL bolgs. I loved it. The videos was amazing and the spiritual thought closed with a golden key. I saved your blog to read it again and again. Well done.
ReplyDeleteRebeca
ReplyDeleteYour post is wonderful! I love Mexico, the culture is part of my life, and I apprecited the opportunity to learn from you. Social media is part of our life, and you have experience with young people, who believes in Social media, and you have the opportunity to bless their life, testify the Gospel
Thank you for your ideas