Good The Impact Of Social Media On Reflective And Serious Thinking Admission Essay Example

Ever since the use of social media proliferated, its impact on people and in diverse sectors of society have been the subject of research and discussion. Reading through various studies on the impact of social media to contemporary societies have exposed positive and negative outcomes. Individuals who weigh the overall impact of social media on one’s life would justify that benefits outweigh any of the disclosed costs only when appropriate balancing of time and resources have been applied on using social media forums. It could always be affirmed that any excessive fixation to a particular activity, person, object, or discipline is always detrimental. As such, social media and instant communication, per se, do not pose obstacles to reflection and serious thinking. The individual’s ability to hone and use cognitive and imaginative skills would depend on the person’s genuine desire to discover and explore innovative concepts, with or without social media’s influential assistance.
Social media and instant communication are considered technological applications that affect cognitive skills through the benefit of immediate access to vast amounts of information at the flick of one’s fingers. As Fr. Adolfo Nicolas has asserted, instant and global technologies could hamper deep reflection abilities and serious thinking engagement through the realization that all possible inquiries have already been answered as well as responded to in the World Wide Web. The immediate gratification that people feel when problems or urgent questions are addressed through the online medium make the use of mental faculties restrictive; especially when compared to the time before the discovery of the Internet. However, it could be rationalized that the people who provided answers to the world’s queries from diverse fields of disciplines still exercise their reflective and serious thinking skills and used the online medium to share the information to be of assistance to others. In this context, it could therefore be asserted that the emergence and prolific use of social media and instant message does not preclude the use of reflective thinking. On the contrary, innately imaginative and creative people find ways and means to question and explore other possibilities beyond what has already been addressed.
One hereby affirms that college students could be encouraged to practice serious reflection in contemporary always, despite being connected in an instantaneous world, through the application of an instructional approach which would develop deep thinking, imaginative skills, as well as reflective and serious thinking. Educators could encourage thinking outside the box and finding alternative solutions to common problems and questions beyond what could be found through social medium and instant messaging forums. When the academic orientation and thrust of the educational institution, as well as of the educators who support the traditional value of harnessing creative and imaginative skills, is to encourage students to use their mental skills to the fullest, then, discoveries and inventions would still abound. Famous philosophers had always questioned existing facts or concepts to discern whether these frameworks, believed to the truths, are indeed factual. As such, contemporary students could be encouraged to assume similar stances with these philosophers to exercise the full potentials of the mind. The answers that could be found in social media and instant messages should not be taken as final and conclusive. Educators could instill the discipline of looking beyond what is seen and heard, to explore a wealth of possibilities for improving what is and discovering what could be.