School Head Warns Parents about Social Media Influence on Children

Uchechukwu Nnaike

The Head of Greensprings School (Lekki Campus), Feyisara Ojugo, has advised parents to be wary of social media and its adverse effects on children.

Ojugo, who stated this during an event to mark this year’s Fathers’ Day at the school, explained how social media distorts children’s value system and urged parents to make a strong positive influence on their children.

“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 play their part to prevent the negative impact 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.

“As parents counter the negative influence of social media on their children, schools must consolidate the effort by teaching children about metacognition,” she added. “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.”