Social media ‘teaching children to be liars’
Social media is creating youngsters obsessed with perfect image, says girls’ school association chief
Social media is turning a generation of children into liars, a leading headmistress has warned. Youngsters are used to projecting a perfect image of themselves online and this is beginning to spill over into real life, too, according to Sue Hincks, the incoming president of the Girls School Association. Ms Hincks said teenagers must learn the importance of acting with integrity, rather than telling “convenient lies” to get ahead.
SOCIAL media is turning a generation of children into liars, a leading headmistress has warned.
Youngsters are used to projecting a perfect image of themselves online and this is beginning to spill over into real life too, according to Sue Hincks, the incoming president of the Girls School Association (GSA).
Ms Hincks, the headmistress of the £12,000-a-year Bolton School Girls’ Division, added that teenagers must learn the importance of acting with integrity, rather than telling “convenient lies” in order to get ahead.
She said that teens “curate” a certain image on social media, including the photo-sharing platforms Instagram and Snapchat. They become used to covering up any perceived imperfections and there is a danger when this attitude trespasses into other aspects of their life.
“If you get used to showing one image of yourself on social media, you may begin to believe that is completely aligned to reality,” Ms Hincks told The Daily Telegraph.
“Obviously you want to present your best self, which is fine. But you might gloss over things that are core to your identity that it’s useful for people to know – you don’t want people to be ashamed of any aspect of their life. We have to tell the truth and encourage young people to present their weaknesses.”
Ms Hincks, who will take over as president of the GSA, which represents the heads of Britain’s leading independent girls’ schools, next month, said youngsters must be “scrupulous” with their CVS, and in the workplace they should share their strengths and weaknesses with colleagues.
“If people are putting forward an image that everything is rosy, that they are finding it fine to juggle their career and family – then if it suddenly all falls apart, there is no support network,” she said.
Ms Hincks added that while lessons about integrity may once have been upheld by public institutions and other parts of society, this is no longer the case.
“People revealed to be unfaithful to their spouse don’t lose all public integrity in the way they once did,” she said.
The Church and institutions such as the BBC used to be considered as the “bastions of public morality”, but now schools have had to fill the void, she added.
Researchers from the University of Southern California have found emotions linked to moral sense are slow to respond to events and have failed to keep up with the modern world.
They warned that as activities such as reading books and meeting friends, where people can define their morals, are taken over by news snippets and fast-moving social networking, the problem could become widespread.