Ok, a little rant for you. It’s the hypocrisy of schools that are pushing for bans on social media and phones in general and then consisitently using social media to show how great their school is.

The reason for a ban on social media is partly due to mental health concerns. How many times have we scrolled through Facebook and Instagram and seen how ‘fabulous’ other people’s lives are? The fact that we are only seeing a snapshot of what people want us to see means we are viewing a synthetic picture.

The teenage brain is very impressionable; add in neurodiversity, and the teen brain is all over the shop, but that is another conversation. Social media can lead to unhealthy beliefs about self-image and how they view other people’s lives, and it can also influence them with biased information and opinions (Mayo Clinic Staff, 2025).

Yet I see schools, particularly one local to me, flooding social media with everything the school has achieved and how wonderful the school is. Schools are giving us a synthetic picture of their schools; they are providing biased information about how wonderful their schools are. On social media, we don’t see the challenges schools and students face; we never see the bad. Instead, schools are presenting what they want to protect teens from.

If schools want to protect teens from social media, they should lead by example in how they use it. Instead of a look at how amazing our school is, which has the underlying message, your school is crap because we are better than you. Should they be using it for information only, or even not use it at all.

There is no correct answer here, only food for thought, but the question to ponder on is if schools want to protect their students from social media, should they reflect on how they use social media themselves?

Mayo Clinic Staff (2025)https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/tween-and-teen-health/in-depth/teens-and-social-media-use/art-20474437