Education and Social Media

Social Media and Driving

Bad habits are easier to develop than good ones, which is why it is irrevocably important to snip the habits of texting and using social media while driving, especially in teens. For a lot of today’s youth, life is centered fully around who they are for other people, and living in the moment has morphed into living on a screen. So, with this mindset, even driving safely becomes a second thought when you feel the need to constantly be up to speed with whatever your friend (or the stranger from your rival school) is doing right now.

Because of the way life has become so technologically focused, kids are constantly feeling the pressure to be in the know (simply because they have the means to access these things immediately), not wanting to feel left out. Safe driving habits can only occur when there are safe mental habits. In order to get to a place where kids have a better mental environment to grow up in, it is important that society leans away from social media, and when they do use it, it should be healthy and to a moderate amount.

Social media creates a toxic environment, which almost adds to why it is so addicting. It’s fast, convenient, and simple to use. On the flipside, it is artificial, scary, and influential. As people are so enraptured by how they are being perceived by their peers, they overlook their lives in the moment in order to continue building up a persona for others to see, and to see the built up personas of others so that they can emulate those things themselves.

All of our lives are precious, and knowingly doing things like texting or checking social media while driving are clear indicators that you aren’t aware of the danger in what you are doing. Many seem to take life with a grain of salt—believing a status update or responding to a meme your friend sent you is more important than keeping your eyes on the road and hands on the wheel. It is important that kids are educated on the weight that one second, one drifting eye, a slipped finger, may have on your life, or in other words your death. Although it is harsh and difficult to come to terms with, it is these truths that our youth must be exposed to so that they are aware of exactly what to do to prevent such events from occurring. Driving is more than a task that gets you from one place to another, it is a dictator of yours and other people’s safety as well.

Unsafe driving habits come from places completely separate from driving itself. It comes from these societal distractions and expectations that people feel the need to conform to. In order to combat this, we have to begin shifting towards a society where we value our lives in the moments that we are living, rather than falsifying our narratives for others to constantly read. Life is precious, and something as dangerous as driving should not be done with a (literal) blind eye.