Parents urged not to outsource children’s upbringing to social media

The head of Greensprings School, Lekki campus, Lagos, Mrs. Feyisara Ojugo, has called on parents to be wary of how social media negatively shapes the thoughts of their children.

She made this call in her welcome address at this year’s Father’s Day celebration held on the premises of the school. In her speech, she explained how social media was distorting the value system of many children and urged parents to have a strong positive influence on their wards.

“Social media is throwing lots of unconventional ideas to our children, and their thoughts, perspective of life and orientation are being negatively influenced by these ideas. Our children are being shaped to think their worth is determined by how they look and what they own.

“Conventional human values such as being caring, serving one another in love, respect, patience, delayed gratification, hard work, honesty and excellence are being thrown out as if they aren’t important. For this reason, I urge parents to be relentless in shaping and influencing their children positively by being consistent in teaching and modelling these values that make us human,” she said.

Ojugo added that while parents do their part to prevent the negative impacts of social media on children, schools should also teach metacognition skills. According to her, these skills help children become independent thinkers who can discern the difference between bad and good social media content.

She said: “As parents counter the negative influence of social media on their children, schools must consolidate the effort by teaching children about metacognition. At Greensprings School, we call it thinking about your thinking, and teaching our students about metacognition makes them reflect on their behaviour, ask internal questions and do the right thing when they come across inappropriate social media content.”

Greensprings School is a British international school with three campuses in Lagos: Anthony, Lekki and Ikoyi.