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What drove me to write this post in the first place is the notion of unrealistic expectations created by both study bloggers and vloggers alike - particularly with what I refer to as the 'hours conundrum'. Taking the example of YouTube, a trend that began to really gain momentum about a year or so ago was the "[x] Hour Study with Me" video. At first glance, there appeared to be nothing wrong with these videos; after all, when I first started out revising, I didn't receive much guidance from my school and was too highly curious as to how much work I should be doing - and the video would, of course, motivate me alongside of that. However, what became particularly striking to me is that these video titles would become more and more extreme - 9 hours already seemed absurd, but 16? Who on earth has the time, let alone the brain capacity, to study effectively for 16 hours straight? You see, the answer to that is nobody - because these YouTubers vlog their 16 hour study day and instead of disclosing the fact that they spent only about a half of this time actually studying and the rest doing normal daily functions, they call it a '16 Hour Study With Me' in the name of getting more views. Now don't get me wrong, this post is not about 'exposing' anybody in particular because there are many who continue to do this - and, what with an evermore saturated platform and difficult algorithm, I understand why people do this; that being said, I want these influencers to think more about the impact that this may have on their often young and impressionable audience - I too fell into the trap of counting my revision by the hours rather than factors such as how well I retained the information, and a four hour study session might as well have been replaced with the term 'failure'. This may all seem rather dramatic, but I believe it is something which puts more pressure than is necessary on young people - which, when many countries are amidst a mental health crisis, certainly isn't helpful.
Linked to the argument above, we also can't forget that things such as toilet breaks or those weird moments of procrastination will be cut out because that's not the footage that people want or came to see - which, again, further perpetuates unrealistic and unhealthy ideals when it comes to studying. And it's not just YouTube, the very same thing happens on Instagram and other platforms alike; in fact, this is something which I know to be true all too well myself - as a blogger, you feel this pressure to share the excessive number of hours you rack up because you want to be validated and you fear being perceived as lazy or simply not worthy if you don't.
This is something which leads nicely to my next point, and that is the issue of poor mental health for the content creators in question. Personally, I would not say that I have felt any pressure to achieve well simply due to the fact that I have a study blog - though, with a blog, it is a lot easier to separate yourself from your art. At this moment in time, you're reading a compilation of words that I have put together, you're not looking me directly in the face for 10 odd minutes - heck you might not even have a clue as to what I look like at all. For that, many YouTubers and vloggers have experienced great pressure to achieve as they believe that any academic failures translate to being personal failures, which will go on to tarnish their credibility in what it is they put out to the public. Of course, there are those who have used these failures to put out a good message, that 'failures' are indeed not failures at all and a part of one's academic journey and that , for me, is commendable - but there simply aren't enough people out there like that at the moment. What's more is that all this may discourage other people from having their say in the community because they don't believe they are good enough - how highly would you hold a blogger's study advice if, regardless of circumstance, they came out with B's and C's in their exams, as opposed to those with A's and A*'s?
Finally, and I'm surprised I haven't mentioned this already, everybody learns in such different ways; what works for some people may not work for others and, indeed, the majority of the people sharing their advice are students themselves with little, if none, scientific background with knowledge of what has been proven to work and what hasn't. Should we leave this task to the experts? Perhaps not, but that's something for you to decide.
All that being said, it wouldn't be just to ignore all of the positive impacts that this community has. Above all, I believe that the online study community has vastly improved access for students from disadvantaged backgrounds to achieve better grades - not only by giving them the techniques and strategies to do this, but simply by letting them know that such achievement is possible. It goes without saying that, naturally, some schools are better at preparing some students for exams than others - but the rise of this community has made such knowledge available to everybody, and I think this has become rather clear when you look at statistics about Oxbridge applications becoming ever more competitive and attracting a greater number of state school students. What's more is that it lets students know of the incredible opportunities that are out there - had it not been for the likes of Viola Helen and Eve Bennett, I would never have even applied for once-in-a-lifetime programmes such as the Eton Universities Summer School or Work Experience at The United Nations, let alone get a place. For that, I don't believe that the study community does more harm than it does good - but I do think that bloggers ought to be more transparent about their content and perhaps think a little more deeply about the power of their influence.