Feyisara Ojugo, head of Greensprings School, Lekki Campus has called on parents to be wary of how social media is negatively shaping the thoughts of their children.
“Social media is throwing lots of unconventional ideas to our children, the perspective of life and orientation is being negatively influenced by these ideas, says Ojugo while delivering a welcome address at the 2021 Father’s Day celebration held at the school in Lagos.
According to her, social media is distorting the value system of children, thus, parents need to make a strong positive influence on their children.
“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,” she said.
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She, however, urged parents to be relentless in shaping and influencing their children positively by being consistent in teaching and modelling their values in the right path.
Noting that while parents do their part to prevent the negative impact of social media on children, she believed that schools should also teach metacognition skills to 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 said.
Citing an example, Ojugo pointed out that at Greensprings School, students are taught about metacognition to enable them to 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. The school opened to the public in 1985 and is now regarded as one of the best schools in Nigeria.
