Instagram Concerns

Although the popular social media APP Instagram can be used in many positive ways, there are significant risks to your child that all parents should be aware of.

Many Instagram users are known for their perfectly posed and edited photos of delicate life. The line between reality and what is posted on social media is often vague. Teens often find it impossible not to compare their appearance, belongings, status, and lifestyle to the lives of those they follow. It is so easy for a child to become consumed by this constant comparison. If your child has gathered a large Instagram following or does not have proper settings turned on, shared information may be public for all to see. Although content showed in your child's Instagram feed is tailored toward their browsing history and interests, it is possible they could encounter potentially inappropriate subject matter.

Feeling concerned or worried? Rather than banning your child from the platform entirely, you might consider the following:

When a child spends too much time viewing life through the images of others, they can forget to take the time to truly live their own life. Encourage your child to incorporate plenty of screen-free and Instagram-free time into their daily lives. One way you can influence your child to develop a healthy relationship with social media is by demonstrating one yourself. Set aside your own screen-free time each day. Also, it is crucial that, as a parent, you understand your child's social media presence and have open and honest conversations about the dangers of self-comparison and oversharing on Instagram. If you notice your child is constantly experiencing the side effects of Instagram-despite your best efforts-take the steps necessary to protect your child. For some, this may mean locking the app on your child's phone until a compromise can be reached.

Pocket Parks in My Eyes

Social Media Degrees: Types, Education and Career Options

At the turn of the century, there was no such thing as a social media degree, but times have changed. The demand for employees with social media skills has skyrocketed due to the number of businesses that are using social media as part of their strategic marketing plan.

Many colleges and universities have answered this demand by creating social media degree programmes that are designed to instruct students in the use of various types of social media— from Facebook to Instagram. These programmes typically focus on how to communicate, network, and market through social media sites.

A high-quality social media degree programme will not only teach you about the basics of the most popular social media platforms, but will also help you understand the digital strategy and how it applies to brand a person, product, service, or company. You will learn that participating in social media means more than just sharing a funny cat video. You will also gain an understanding of how posts go viral, how to communicate with business customers, and why it’s more important than ever to think twice before posting anything. If you are interested in marketing, particularly Internet marketing, a social media degree could give you the advantage you need over other competitors in the job market.

A long-term degree programme is not your only social media education option. You can find one-day and two-day social media seminars in almost every major city. There are also several well-known conferences that gather social media experts and enthusiasts in one location. If you want to become a social media guru (大师) without spending any money, that option is available to you as well.

The best way to perfect your ability with anything is with practice. Spending time studying, and more importantly, using social media on your own will give you applicable skills that can transfer from your home computer to your career.

Museum Craze Involves More Teenagers

More museums are here waiting for you! China’s capital, Beijing, is going to open another batch (一批) of museums this year. The building of a new branch of the Palace Museum, one of the world’s most visited tourist attractions, kicked off as well.

As the museum craze has grown stronger in the past few years, teenagers in China have become more involved in exploring museums, where they can immerse (沉浸) themselves in modern technology as well as culture from the past. According to Educator magazine, visits by teenagers to museums each year increased from 220 million to 290 million in the past 5 years. Among the increasing numbers of museum visitors, many of them were teenagers accompanied by their families, reported Guangming Daily earlier this month.

To draw younger visitors, many museums are creating more offline activities for the purpose of spreading Chinese culture. They include artifact making, night visits, secret adventures, treasure evaluation, and some interesting courses. At the China Hangzhou Arts & Crafts Museum, for example, teenagers gathered around to make paper umbrellas during the Spring Festival holiday. With white gloves on and little spades in their hands, visitors in Henan province got to experience the daily work of archaeologists (考古学家). Apart from the activities, some museums even open branches especially designed for teenagers. A hall called Popular Agricultural Science for Young Visitors is a special branch launched by China Agricultural Museum. It is an exhibition hall that combines both visual and audio technology to involve teenagers in agriculture. Besides these offline approaches, a number of museums have also created official websites for teenagers, the Palace Museum in particular. Online visitors may go on an exciting adventure on the website in the style of a comic book.

What do We Know About “Mathephobia”

Mathematician Mary de Lellis Gough, who often observed her struggling students fail to work out mathematical problems, coined the term ‘mathephobia’ in 1953. She described it as “a disease that proves fatal before its presence is detected”. Other experts have defined it as “the panic, helplessness and mental disorganization that arises among some people when they are required to solve a mathematical problem” and “a general fear of contact with mathematics”.

Sian Beilock, a cognitive scientist and her colleagues of Barnard College in New York have shown that math anxiety can start as soon as we enter formal schooling. “Math is one of the first places in school in western cultures where we really learn about whether we got something right or wrong, and are exposed to being evaluated in timed tests.”

Girls may be more prone to it than boys. Primary school teachers often have high levels of math anxiety, says Beilock, and in the US and elsewhere, they are mostly female. Since young children tend to identify with adults of the same gender, this means girls are more likely to pick up math anxiety from their female teachers. Having a female teacher with math anxiety makes girls more likely to believe gendered stereotypes about math, leading to poorer achievement.

“Once you have it, it can be self-lasting. Worrying about it can make it worse.” says Beilock, whose study of children between the ages of five and eight suggests math anxiety might weaken performance by burdening working memory. “As our ability to focus limited, our attention gets divided when we do more than one task at a time.” she says. “If you’re worried about having to do math, you may have an internal monologue saying you can’t do this and at the same time you’re trying to calculate numbers.”

When people have math anxiety, they tend to avoid the subject, as researchers from 2019 show. But since math builds on itself, avoiding it makes it harder to catch up. “Math is foundational. If you miss a certain idea, it’s harder to learn the next one.” says Darcy Hallett. “And then you can fall behind, which might make math more of a targeted anxiety compared to other topics.”