It’s no secret that almost every student in Falls Church High School is active on social media. With the majority of students being active online by keeping their streaks with their friends on Snapchat, or by going live on Instagram, or retweeting whatever they find hilarious on Twitter, FCHS students enjoy spending their time on any platform of social media.
The most obvious app that rules them all here at FCHS is Snapchat, which is so popular at our school that it has multiple “geostories” dedicated just to the school. This means that if you check your stories on Snapchat, you can see people giving updates on their daily school life. However, as expected, there are a lot of pros and cons when it comes to using any form of social media in class. We took the time to interview students of different grade levels who are active online to see how they feel about the impact of social media on Falls Church High School.
One big effect of social media at FCHS is memes. All it takes is one button to post a hilarious meme on Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, etc., and the next day, you’ll have over 50% of the school population reciting them like a flock of parrots who just learned their first curse word from their owner. The thing about these memes, trends, and inside jokes is that eventually after a week or so, it becomes stale and another meme arrives to take its place in the circle of life.
Takeshi Tamashiro (9) says, “I don’t exactly know how many freshmen are active on social media but I’m assuming it’s a large number. A lot of students may share a couple of memes with each other through Twitter, Snapchat, or Instagram.”
He also added on to his previous statement, saying, “While social media may negatively impact FCHS, I’d say it mostly improves school for students. Oftentimes, students can’t interact with each other outside of school without social media. It opens up for more time talking with other students without actually being in school. Social media increases the speed at which information spreads, as well as rumors.”
Gabriele Clay (10) says, “It has a negative and a positive impact on school for sure. Some of the negative ways are shown through online bullying. They’re also shown through not fitting in and not having as many followers as other people. Some of the positive ways can be shown by having a school account and spreading positivity throughout the school. We can get everyone involved and also post updates on school events. Social media has definitely made a positive impact on our school and hopefully we can get the negative impacts to a zero.”
Akira Tamashiro (10) is one of the students at Falls Church who uses social media to his own advantage, constantly sharing hilarious videos and memes with his fellow students. When asked on his opinion of the impact of social media, he remarked “It’s not as influential as one would think it’d be for a school environment. Only when it comes to viral trends or memes will it get people talking, but locally a post would only be talked about through your friends and no one more. This involves posts and accounts made by school faculty and leadership students. Lots of people watch Jungle News every Friday in their Jag Time classrooms, but the FCHS Leadership YouTube channel has a minimal fraction of the number of students in this school. Nobody really talks about Jungle News unless they’ve seen it on the projector screen in their classroom.”
As you can see, opinions are divided when it comes to social media’s impact on Falls Church High School. Though it’s useful to share your daily school life with fellow classmates and talk about the many events that go on here at FCHS, it can also be used irresponsibly, such as recording fights and spreading rumors. So to those who don’t think much about consequences, remember: with great power comes great responsibility.