In Touch with Socials — Teenagers, Bulgarian Schools, Pandemic
Since the spring of 2020, a lot of aspects of day-to-day life have changed. As Bulgaria closed its borders, as work shifted away from the offices, as clothing factories started sewing face masks, as toilet paper companies gained more revenue, life took a different shape — one with clearly defined limits. On the 13th of March, the Bulgarian government announced a state of emergency. This meant that our civil rights were taken away except for the basic right to live and not to be tortured. The officials could establish new temporary laws. And they did. Flights were canceled, quarantines imposed, restaurants and bars declined reservations from clients.
What inevitably shut their doors as well were the schools. Although one could argue that the recreational activities, events and tourism suffer the most because of lockdown, we could also reason that in the long run it is the schools that face the biggest challenge. They are an institution where major changes are not practiced, since small improvements take years of municipality gatherings, discussions of commissions, experts’ reports and a lot of patience.
So when the pandemic arrived at the doorstep of the schools and entered the building, a demand for drastic measures arose. And this time, the Ministry of Education and Science had to react quicker than ever and apply a solution which was not yet determined to be the right one. First, they announced two weeks between the 16th and the 29th of March as non-school days. After this period was over, an online education was introduced for the whole of Bulgaria. One would expect that these 14 days were used for preparation and perfecting the new methodology of teaching. And indeed, a platform to work with was chosen, subscriptions were purchased and also some computers for those that did not have disposable technology at home. But on Monday, the 30th of March, the system ran far from smoothly. The teachers were not trained well enough on how to work with the tools they were given. The issue was relevant especially for the ones above 50 years old, who constitute approximately half of the teaching body. To these teachers, students had to explain how to turn on a camera, unmute the microphone, upload files, set a timer for tests and so on. The stress was present on both ends of the screen.
Amidst the pandemic, the term ended entirely online, no celebrations and ceremonies. Children spent the summer in different conditions than before. Fortunately, there was hope for the new school year to be on-ground. This was confirmed when on the 15th of September, the usual first day of school, students entered the real life classrooms. The only differences were the omnipresent masks on the tables and on some of the faces. But the virus was still roaming the buildings and when someone tested positive, the whole class had to be quarantined for two weeks. As cases increased, the switch between on-ground and online became a regular schedule. The government passed on the responsibility of problem-solving to the district headquarters that decided the rules for each municipality separately and in some cases even for individual high schools. On November, 22nd only 3 regions out of the 28 had on-ground education. As of December, 5th everybody is online. This fast-paced transitions and changes undoubtedly impact not only the quality of education, but also the mental health and stress levels of the students.
In order to understand what the consequences of lockdown and online education are, a survey was conducted for the purpose of this article. The respondents are 47 students between 13–16 years old from three cities in Bulgaria — the capital, one big and one small city. As the results indicate, 44.4% of the people miss on-ground school a lot. Slightly more are the ones who share that they have missed it at first, but now they have adapted. The majority of students are able to pay attention only for some of the subjects when they are online. Around one fourth cannot focus on the classes for more than 15 minutes. When analyzing the reasons behind this tendency, the main one that appeared was the usage of social media during school hours. 59.5% of the respondents said that they log in to social media almost every time they have classes. By far, the most spread social media platform is Instagram, with 85.1% of the people having a profile. It is followed by TikTok at 80.4%. Yet when referring to most time spend in a platform, TikTok takes the lead. Facebook is not a factor since most of the surveyed use mainly the Messenger feature.
On one hand, what these apps have in common is that they connect people with each other, no matter the distance. As a principal of a leading school in Stara Zagora, Teodora Nikolova notes in an article by the newspaper Dnevnik — one of the biggest disadvantages of online education is the lack of real communication between peers. According to her, this “torments the children”. In an open answer of the survey almost all teenagers wrote that the first thing they would want to do after the pandemic is over is to see their friends. Therefore, it is logical to explain why they reach out to one another in social media during class. It could be to make a remark, ask a question or share a thing they realized because of the material covered.
On the other hand, more often than not it is about distraction. As we can highlight from the survey results, the most used app is not Messenger, but TikTok. The purpose of the app is to stream short funny videos on auto play. This keeps students engaged for hours. The app became popular in Bulgaria at the most convenient moment — during lockdown. Students got used to it in summer, so when the education transferred to online only again, they returned to their habit of watching it. Although usage of such platforms is not recommended in general, solely social media should not take the whole blame here. The problem is the combination of several pandemic lockdowns, uncertainty around school schedule, spending all the time between four walls and not seeing friends. Taking this into account, one can conclude that social media is an intermediary in the conflict. The issue is way too complex to have one reason for it. Yet it could be explained by saying that as the academic world moves in the digital space, it gets mixed up with the world of entertainment, different ways of interaction, advertising and purchase of data information. This results in confusion among students and lack of concentration.
The longer the online education continues, the bigger the problem would get. As no one can predict when and if life would return back to normal, it is vital to act now. The solution does not depend only on the school system, the economy or the tech companies but on every family that has teenagers. The Centre for humane technology in USA proposes steps that parents, siblings, educators and even students themselves can take to mitigate the distraction and improve school satisfaction. The obvious solution would be to delete social media accounts. But the Centre suggests something better. If one teenager abstains from social media, he/she would just feel left out. But if families, group of friends or even schools do group migrations just like birds do, the effect would be better mental health. It is possible to lead a better life, even in a pandemic.
