leaving cert personal essay 2022

Home » News » Leaving Certificate 2022 English Paper 1 Review

Leaving Certificate 2022 English Paper 1 Review

• June 8, 2022

By Sinead Caslin Cregg

English Paper One was a lovely, enjoyable paper with lots of choice and flexibility for students. Students should be very pleased with the exam questions, which were phrased nicely and offered lots of scope for both creativity and discursive flair. The theme of Paper One 2022 was “Powerful Voices” and the texts in the Comprehension section were fair and accessible. TEXT 1 featured an article about the American poet Amanda Gorman and posed no major difficulties in terms of language and comprehension. The twenty mark question for all three texts asked students to discuss four elements / features of the language, which was a lovely, do-able question. 

The Question B tasks were varied and encouraged students to engage with the topics of poetry, music and books, respectively. A “podcast” and an “editorial” featured as options here, both of which are new to the paper. The podcast invited students to “reflect on the importance of music in your life” and was a lovely option in my opinion. Students also had the choice of writing an “open letter” on “the study of poetry” and whether it should be an “optional or compulsory element of Leaving Certificate English.” 

The range of essays offered in the 2022 Composing Section was excellent. There was wonderful scope and variety in the seven essay titles offered to students this year. There were two short story options and two personal essay options, as well as an “article” on “fashion choices”, a “speech” about the “social and cultural values” and “perception of Ireland” and a “discursive essay” on “powerful voices”.  The personal essays are always a popular choice with students and the two titles here offered plenty of creative scope. Candidates were invited to choose / reflect on “items or objects that have become faithful companions in your life” or “reflect on the value of engaging in all kinds of learning”.  The essay titles overall were very fair and creatively stimulating. There was also plenty of opportunity for students of all abilities to showcase their command of English and written expression. Overall, English Paper One was a very fair, enjoyable paper with no major surprises. 

Recent News

Congratulations to Leaving Cert Students

Phenomenal Results at Yeats College

Boost Your Exam Success with Yeats College Christmas Revision Courses

Plan for Leaving Cert Success with Yeats College’s August Preparation Course

Exam Review: Accounting

Request a call back.

Join our priority mailing list for monthly exam tips & resources, course notifications and reminders.

Revision Courses

We provide a wide range of intensive one day and seasonal revision courses for Junior Certificate and Leaving Certificate students.

Our full time students are offered unlimited subject choices, smaller classes, career guidance, and a range of extra-curricular activities.

Join our newsletter today for all the latest on upcoming courses, news about the school, and study tips to help get you, or your child, through the exam year.

Yeats College, College Road, Galway

+353 91 533500 [email protected]

Yeats House, 40-41 Parnell St, Waterford

+353 51 304211 [email protected]

Quick Links

(c) 2022 Yeats College – All Rights Reserved

Privacy Policy | Website by Proactive

English - Higher

This subject will test your creativity and your comprehension of poets, plays and fiction.

In the exam, it is really important to work to the clock and get your timings correct so that you get all questions finished. Pay attention to your vocabulary, grammar, punctuation and handwriting as this all will play a part in how the examiner marks your exam. Finally, don’t forget to study Paper 1 – there is just as much potential for practice and preparation as the studied material on Paper 2.

Higher Level Course Content

• 1 Composition (Personal Writing)
• 1 Reading Comprehension
• Comparative - Cultural Context (2024)
• Comparative - Literary genre (2023/24)
• Comparative - Theme or Issue (2023/24)
• Comparative - Vision & Viewpoint (2023)
• Hamlet (2024)
• Macbeth (2023)
• Othello (2022)
• Poetry - Bishop (2023)
• Poetry - Dickinson (2023)
• Poetry - Donne (2023)
• Poetry - Heaney (2024)
• Poetry - Hopkins (2024)
• Poetry - Kavanagh (2023)
• Poetry - Mahon (2023)
• Poetry - Meehan (2023/24)
• Poetry - Ni Chuilleanain (2024)
• Poetry - Plath (2024)
• Poetry - Rich (2023)
• Poetry - Yeats (2023)
• Text - A Doll's House
• Text - All the Light We Cannot See
• Text - Frankenstein (2023)
• Text - Pride & Prejudice
• Text - Regeneration
• Text - The CrucibleText - The Handmaid's Tale
• Text - The Picture of Dorian Gray (2023)
• Text - Wuthering Heights
• Text- Days Without End
• Unseen Poetry

Ordinary Level Course Content:

• Comparative - Hero, Villain
• Comparative - Relationships
• Comparative - Social Setting
• Comparative - Theme
• Poetry - Brooks (2023)
• Poetry - Bryce (2023)
• Poetry - Dickinson (2022)
• Poetry - Donne
• Poetry - Duffy (2022/23)
• Poetry - Eliot
• Poetry - France (2022/23)
• Poetry - Hughes (2024)
• Poetry - Joseph (2023)
• Poetry - Meehan (2022/23)
• Poetry - Morrissey (2023)
• Poetry - Muldoon (2023)
• Poetry - Ni Chuilleanain
• Poetry - Rich (2022/23)
• Poetry - Shakespeare (2023)
• Poetry - Shelley (2023)
• Poetry - Williams (2024)
• Poetry - Yeats (2023/24)
• Text - All My Sons
• Text - All the Light We Cannot See (2021)
• Text - Frankenstein
• Text - Never Let me Go
• Text - Philadelphia, Here I Come!
• Text - Room
• Text - The Cove (2023)
• Text - The Crucible
• Text - The Handmaid's Tale (2021)
• Text - The Lauras
• Text - The Picture of Dorian Gray
• Text- A Raisin in the Sun (2023)

The English exam is very understandable and approachable. The exam is designed to let you express what you do know rather than catch you out on things you don't know. The exam consists of two papers, for both Higher and Ordinary levels. 

Higher and Ordinary Level - 170 mins (200 marks)

Three texts (one of which is visual) are presented to you on a general theme.  Two sets of questions, an A and a B follow each text. You must answer a Question A on one text and a Question B on a different text.    (100 marks)

Section II 

Composing - you must write an extended composition in a specific genre of language from a list of seven choices (story, talk, debate, article, essay). (100 marks)

Higher and Ordinary Level - 200 mins (200 marks)

    Section I    The single text    (60 marks)

    Section II   The Comparative study  (70 marks)

    Section III  Poetry     (70 marks)

    (i)  Unseen poem   (20 marks) 

    (ii)  Prescribed poetry  (50 marks)

    (i)  Unseen poem   (20 marks)

    (ii)  Four poems will be printed on the exam paper and you must answer questions on one of the four.   (50 marks)

Future Careers with Leaving Certificate English

A pass in English is a requirement for entry into many CAO courses. Students who like English can follow a wide variety of career paths including; Advertising, Writing, Arts, Business, Management, Journalism, Politics, and Entertainment.

Download the  Leaving Cert English Syllabus

Download the Prescribed texts for the 2022 Examination

Download the Prescribed texts for the 2023 Examination

Download the Leaving Cert  English Guidelines for Teachers

Download the Leaving Cert English Chief Examiner's Report  (2013) 

Past Papers

Created by studyclix.

Community Activity

Really Useful Links for Writers: Leaving Cert Essay Writing

Paul FitzSimons

• 29 May 2014

I have good news – the weather will be beautiful next Wednesday. The sun will shine, the skies will be clear, the temperature will be in the twenties. How do I know that? Because it’s the first day of the Leaving Cert Exams.

Besides being the unofficial start of summer, Day 1 of the Leaving is also English Paper 1, the culmination of two years’ work for around fifty thousand English language students.

The Leaving Cert English exam is divided into two papers – Paper 1, which is all about comprehension and composition and Paper 2, which covers The Single Text , The Comparative Study and Poetry. Like the other two-part exams Maths and Irish, English 1 and 2 happen on two different days – the first Wednesday and Thursday mornings of the schedule. Maybe this is to give brains and hands a chance to recover from a hectic morning of essay-writing.

Besides having the aptitude to tell a good story, writing essays at Leaving Cert level requires certain acquired skills, most of which we learn over the years of study prior to the exam. However, there are some aspects of writing the perfect essay that we don’t necessarily pick up or, with the deluge of knowledge that we’re trying to take in, have slipped from our memories. Thankfully, there are plenty of online resources that will fill in those gaps and also offer some additional advice on writing, organisational and time-saving that will prove invaluable on the day.

On the ever useful website LeavingCertEnglish.net – seriously, I wish this had been around in my day – we are given an invaluable guide to preparing for and then sitting down to English Paper 1. Their pages include advice on approaching each essay, what needs to be covered to achieve a passing mark and what flourishes will help to get that all-important A.

After sitting his Leaving Cert in 2011, student and blogger Aidan Curran decided to take the lessons he learned during that traumatic year and share them on his website. His post How To Get An A In English Essay Writing takes us through everything we need to remember coming up to and during the exam. He reminds us that, as essay-writing is not something we can memorize, it makes it both the easiest and most difficult part of the exam.

Most of the above applies to Paper 1 of the exam. Of course, there are also some essays to be written for Paper 2, which deals with curriculum’s prescribed texts, such as the play, novels and poetry. The Clevernotes website offers us some invaluable advice on tackling the second English paper compositions, suggesting that, in order to form a cogent and coherent response to the question asked, an essay must always contain an introduction, a number of well-focused body paragraphs and a conclusion.

For some slightly more tongue-in-cheek advice on essay writing, we can watch video blogger Clisare’s video on Entertainment.ie. She takes us through her unique thoughts on writing both English and Irish essays. She does offer some interesting insight but the fact that she advises us to remind the teacher that ‘Irish is a dead language’ suggests that we should probably take most of her tips with a grán salainn.

If you feel an online tutor will be able to help, check out TutorHunt .

“The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.” – Sydney J. Harris

A Whole Website Dedicated To It.

LeavingCertEnglish.net has all the advice, information and sample exams we need to tackle the Paper 1 essay.

“”Stick to the topic. Have plenty of ideas. Identify problems but also offer solutions.”

http://leavingcertenglish.net/2012/03/inspiration/ .

Them’s The Rules.

LeavingCertEnglish.net takes us through six important rules for writing the perfect essay.

“It’s really important to grab the reader’s attention. Use a quote, or a series of rhetorical questions, a list, or a vivid description.”

http://leavingcertenglish.net/2011/05/six-rules-of-essay-writing/

From The Horse’s Mouth.

Recent Leaving Cert student Aidan Curran takes us his advice on Essay-writing, based on his own experience.

“Obviously, when you get the essay titles first you say “That’s it, I’m screwed, we’ll call it a day”. But if you just look at them, you’ll realise that they can be changed to your strengths.”

http://aidancurran.com/how-to-get-an-a1-in-english-essay-writing-aidan-curran/

It’s Not All About Paper 1, You Know.

English Paper 2, which deals with the subject’s prescribed texts and poetry, also involves some essay writing. Clevernotes tells us how to tackle it.

“The most basic principal of essay writing is that it should be structured. Your essay must form a cogent and coherent response to the question asked.”

https://www.clevernotes.ie/english/hl/leaving-cert/how-to-write-a-paper-two-essay/

And Lastly, Some Proper Serious Advice (Or Maybe Not)

Vlogger Clisare gives us her unique take on Essay Writing.

“Always end English Language essays with ‘…and then I woke up.’ Teachers love that.”

http://entertainment.ie/wtf/WATCH-How-to-write-a-leaving-cert-essay/191520.htm

(c) Paul FitzSimons

About the author

Paul FitzSimons is a screenwriter and novelist and has written the novel ‘Burning Matches’ and a number of scripts for film and TV. He has worked as a storyline writer on RTE’s ‘Fair City’. His short stories are published in ‘Who Brought The Biscuits’ by The Naas Harbour Writers. Paul likes crime thrillers, good coffee and Cadbury’s chocolate. He doesn’t like country-and-western music or people who don’t indicate on roundabouts.

Paul also runs the  Script Editing service Paul | The | Editor .  paulfitzsimons.com

Subscribe to our newsletter

Get all of the latest from writing.ie delivered directly to your inbox., featured books.

Your complete online writing magazine.

Guest blogs, courses & events.

• Junior Cert
• Elizabeth Bishop
• Emily Dickinson
• Seamus Heaney
• Thomas Kinsella
• Derek Mahon
• All 2014 guides on CD
• Sylvia Plath
• Eavan Boland (LC 2012)
• Patrick Kavanagh (LC 2012)
• Adrienne Rich (LC 2013)
• Gerard Manley Hopkins (LC 2013)
• Cancelled Order
• Thank You for your order

Tag Archives: personal essay

Tone (personal essay).

I love this cartoon from Natalie Dee on fanpop.com

Before Christmas I got my TYs (over 50 of them) and my Leaving Certs to write personal essays. Their essays for the most part were funny, sad, moving, at times mad and in many cases very very brave. Among other things I read about a childhood obsession with goldfish; a superhero granny; being an only child; falling into a river in front of the boy you absolutely love love love; suicide; a haunted church; spontaneous uncontrollable crying spells; and being wrapped in tin foil and carried off a volleyball court on a stretcher…

I also discovered that “ a commode i s the love child of a wheelchair and a portaloo! ”

I did notice however that very occasionally a personal essay didn’t  ‘ring true ‘. It’s hard for me to explain how I knew that the writer was inventing or embellishing a sad story (leaning towards or sometimes completely inventing a fiction) rather than drawing on real life experiences (fact) but when I asked a couple of students about it sure enough they said what they’d written about hadn’t actually happened but they felt compelled to give the personal essay a tragic ending in order to engage the reader emotionally.

Oddly, it had the opposite effect – I enjoyed these essays up to the point where they transformed into melodrama and then I just somehow knew that the writer was trying to force a reaction out of me.

Have a look at this beautiful personal essay – but be warned:

(1) It will make you cry

(2) You could never write this. You are not a thirty-something-yr-old widower with a toddler and a dead wife. You are a 17 or 18yr old Irish leaving cert student and this is the perspective you MUST write from when you write a personal essay in the exams because fundamentally a personal essay IS NOT A SHORT STORY and IS NOT FICTION. Of course you can write about something funny that happened to someone else and pretend it happened to you; of course you can exaggerate for dramatic or humorous effect. But try to write what you know or your essay is in danger of coming across as insincere and false.

Here it is: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2013/jan/19/telling-toddler-mummys-dead?CMP=twt_gu

Now have a look at this personal essay, whose tone is much more philosophical and opinionated rather than emotional – the tone is completely different but there is no question that it also falls into the category of personal essay.

Here it is (with the longest url in the history of life the universe and everything):

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/education/an-a-student-regrets-his-grades/article7359620/?cmpid=rss1&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:%20TheGlobeAndMail-National%20%28The%20Globe%20and%20Mail%20-%20National%20News%29&buffer_share=8b014

I guess I just want you to realise that you can write a serious opinion piece; an emotional admission; or a funny satire and ALL will still qualify as ‘personal essays’ as long as you write in the first person (“I”) and as long as you are yourself (Irish teenager) not a fictional narrator (a witchdoctor, a talking rubbish bin or a homeless wino).

For clarification of the difference between the personal essay and memoir check this out: http://meghanward.com/blog/2012/08/21/personal-essay-vs-memoir/

That’s all for now folks. Good luck with the mocks revision!

Posted in Composing , Discussions

Tagged ireland , leaving cert english , personal essay , sample personal essays , tone

Personal Essay Titles

Here are a few personal essay titles that I gave to my Junior Certs today. I’m really just posting them here so I’ll have them for again! Most of them are taken from a random selection of previous exam papers. Some of the titles that usually come up lean in particular directions – towards descriptive short stories or dialogue heavy ‘scenes’; others towards journalistic opinion pieces – so I’ve avoided them deliberately because I want today to be about the art of personal writing. What these titles have in common is that they ask you to insert yourself into the essay, to reveal who you are as a person – your thoughts, beliefs, experiences, hopes, dreams, personality and sense of humour.

• The things about myself I’d most like to change
• In 30 years time…
• Childhood memories
• Life’s little luxuries
• A significant event that changed my life
• It’s a weird and wonderful world

p.s. Another title I made up recently that produced some interesting responses from Leaving Certs was “Write a personal essay about some of the funniest/most embarrassing moments of your life so far”.

Posted in Junior Cert , Teachers

Tagged essay titles , ireland , junior cert english , leaving cert english , personal essay , state exams

Personal Essay – Practice

• A short story is fictional.
• The narrator of the story can be anyone – a homeless person, a world leader, God, Hitler or a sheep.
• You can use first person OR third person narration.
• There is a plot, a setting, characters, a limited timescale (the tighter the better in my experience) and oftentimes a twist (again, having one is generally better than not having one in my experience!).
• By contrast a personal essay is based on reality (but feel free to exaggerate & even make things up as long as they sound believable – here if you want to include a talking sheep you’ll also have to mention the drugs you were on when this happened!!!).
• The speaker is YOU – you are writing as yourself, a teenager who lives in Ireland. You cannot be a sheep for a personal essay 😉
• You will (and should) use descriptive writing but you will also use quotes from your favourite bands and anecdotes from your childhood or family and offer your thoughts and opinions and attitudes and beliefs and feelings. You may use rhetorical questions and lists and statistics. In other words, every technique available to you.
• You are not limited to a fixed timescale – a short story is a slice of life whilst a personal essay can be a montage of various events from past to present to future, from you, to your family and friends, to other people and cultures, from local to national to global.

In order to make this REAL for my students, I recently did this experiment in class. Everyone wrote a mini personal essay of between 200 and 300 words (including me). As a prompt we began with the words “My name is ___________. Let me tell you a little bit about the kind of person I am”. Each of us was allowed to give ‘clues’ to our identity but we made it a rule that you couldn’t make it too obvious. The reason I joined in was  because they bullied me into it!!! Ok, I’m being facetious. But in reality I think it made them feel less self-conscious about ‘revealing’ themselves, laying themselves bare to each other as it were (the essence of being a good writer if you ask me!). They also insisted that I write in the persona of me as a teenage girl. Again this made absolute sense – if I started referring to my husband and child I’d really have given the game away 😉

After creating a first draft, we all typed them up, same font and font size, I checked for spelling and grammatical errors (God help me this was time consuming) and then I printed them off. The first two girls who finished (thanks Lauren and Cathy) sat down with the list of names of people in the class and five sticky notes and created groups which were a genuine mixture of personalities and which kept close friends apart. This meant they were facing a real challenge guessing who the writer was and more importantly they were getting a true insight into people in the class they might not know very well. Each group of five was given six mini-essays (all bundles included my one but no group got a bundle including any of their own). Their job was to figure out who the writer was, a variation on the game of guess who where you have a post it note stuck to your forehead and you have to figure out what famous person’s name is written on it.

All of this took place over four 40 minute classes and not rushing things was definitely the key to success. My students were also pretty brave in finding the courage to reveal themselves publicly in front of their peers. Getting me to join in led to some pretty funny moments – any student in their right mind would be mortified to be mixed up with their teacher (the one person it is absolutely NOT COOL to be similar to in any way!). We did this immediately after a week of working on and creating short stories so the contrast helped in embedding the distinction between short stories and personal essays in their brains (at least I hope so). Finally, teachers, if you grade this EVERYONE GETS AN A. You cannot and must not give someone’s personality anything less, nor did I want to – this class are a great bunch of women and I’m lucky to be their teacher. In a few weeks time we’ll come back to them and analyse them from a writing point of view – what works, what doesn’t, which bits keep the reader most engaged and entertained but in the meantime I think they’ve learned a lot about personal essays and about each other (as have I) .

Below I’ve included my effort if you want a template to work off!!!

I guess it really depends who you ask. My mother says I’m a ‘flibbertigibbert’, flitting from one thing to the next, never sitting still long enough to eat a decent dinner – or wash up afterwards! My father says I’m a nutcase – well actually, he sings a song “you’re a nut, beep, beep” and grabs my nose and twists it for the “beep beep” bit (funny man!) My sister tells me repeatedly that I’m ‘the adopted one’. I am a bit odd I suppose, but refusing to recognise that we’re even related is a bit harsh don’t you think?

My boyfriend says I’m pretty and smart. Far too pretty and smart to be going out with him. He’s wrong but I guess it’s nice to have someone who thinks you’re special. Special in a good way, not special in a ‘not the shapest tool in the box’ kind of way. Although on occasion I have done things that might cause people to label me a complete and utter spanner!

And me? I’m not sure how I feel about myself. Some days I think I’m just your average teenager, trying to figure it all out and not do too much homework along the way. Some days I think I’m a supersonic bolt of electric lightening sent to save the world from spinning out of control. And some days I wish, with all the power in every fibre of my being that I could just be somebody else. Just for a little while. And then those days pass and I get back to the business of just being me. It’s a tough job baby, but somebody’s gotta do it!

Posted in Composing , Junior Cert , Teachers

Tagged english , junior cert , leaving cert , personal essay , practice

Recent Posts

• A long slow goodbye…
• Lear’s journey
• Some themes in Lear…
• King Lear – Plot Chronology
• King Lear quotes (in translation!)
• Justice in King Lear – how to construct an answer…
• The Old Warrior and Me
• Single text options…
• Tackling the Comparative
• Reading Shakespeare (Othello)
• Game Based Learning
• Originality – Freshness – Energy – Style
• Discussions
• Comprehensions
• Comparative
• Studied poetry
• Unseen poetry
• Media Studies
• Uncategorized

Affiliations

Nominations.

• Leaving Cert. English (Higher) 2022 Deferred: Paper 1 Section II Composing
• Back to the question >

Smart Tips!

When writing a personal essay , the most important thing to remember is that it must be about yourself and it must be genuine. Setting a narrative style essay in a historical context would immediately fail to register the genre as, quite obviously, you are not living in the past. 

Register features of the genre such as:

• Write in first person point of view.
• Use personal narrative.
• Move in and out of the narrative and provide comment and insight.
• Language register should be conversational, personal and intimate.
• Must be credible.
• Cyclical structure can work well as you return to your initial thought or feeling.
• End should contain some form of impact.
• Help us make e-xamit better - e-mail support if you spot any errors!
• The content of this site is the intellectual property of e-xamit.ie
• Legal & privacy information

Leaving Cert English Personal Essay: one or more moments of uncertainty you have experienced.

Write a personal essay about one or more moments of uncertainty you have experienced..

Enda's English Notes

Junior and Leaving Cert English Notes

Personal Essay

Write a personal essay in which you discuss what you think your life would be like if you were unable to use any form of social media for a whole year.

Our SPHE teacher recently asked us to take out our phones and check our average screen time. I duly obliged, happy to get access to my phone during class. I scrolled through the phone and found the screen time under the digital well-being app and was shocked to discover that I spend on average 10 hours and 43 minutes a day on my phone.

Three hours on TikTok, two hours on Instagram, two hours on Twitter,  two hours on Google Chrome, an hour on Facebook and forty three minutes on Google Classroom. The initial shock at how much time I was spending on my phone got worse when I realised that I sleep for ten hours a day, which means that I spend less than four hours a day without my phone, which confused my teacher as I’m supposed to be ‘paying attention’ in class for six hours a day!

This got me thinking, what would my life be like if I went a whole year without social media? It’s a scary prospect to be honest as most of my friends spend their time discussing the latest trends on instagram, the funniest videos on TikTok and we communicate via messenger on Facebook. But when I think about how much time I’m spending online, I really would like to see what life would be like without it.

Obviously the initial shock would be difficult to deal with, but I think that there would definitely be positives to be considered as well. 

First things first, I wouldn’t have to see what Gary and Adam have eaten for breakfast, lunch and dinner and feel bad about all the junk food I eat. The two boys are really good friends but they’ve gone on a crazy fitness regime and for some reason they think we need to see their dinners, which basically consist of kale, broccoli, topped with some kale and a side of broccoli. It’s pretty depressing when you’re finishing off your second Big Mac and you click in and see that they’re eating a mountain of vegetables after their latest gym workout. Not depressing enough to make me stop and go exercise but it does ruin a good meal.

And of course, you can’t go on a new fad diet and exercise regime unless you show the fruits of your labour to all your followers. I’ve lost count of the times where I’m sitting back on my recliner, feet up devouring a ‘share’ bag of Doritos all by myself and I see the boys standing in front of the mirror showing off their six packs and pumped up biceps. Like, do I really need to be reminded of how lazy and unfit I am every time I lift the phone? Imagine how happy I would be if I didn’t have to see that for a year! I’d be able to sit back with my crisps with not a care in the world. It really does highlight how stupid social media is. I know for a fact that people who pose in front of the mirror for a selfie are holding their breath and taking a picture of the ‘perfect’ look. That snapshot is not reality but it still makes me and millions more like me, feel bad about how we look and makes us feel guilty for indulging in junk food every now and then. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to eat and relax and not worry about how we look?

With the Leaving Cert on the horizon and the points race in full flow, you’d think that now would be the perfect time to kick into gear and get studying. But how can you start learning off Shakespeare quotes when there’s endless videos of cats doing funny tricks or strangers handing sums of cash to people in need? TikTok is probably the most addictive app ever created and it is crazy when I think that I can spend up to four hours a day watching random thirty second clips, while also recording myself doing the stupidest things imaginable in the hope of ‘going viral.’ It’s safe to say that my dreams of being a physiotherapist would be better served with learning off my biology and English but who knows what wonders lie behind the alluring swipe of the phone, which unleashes a new video, which is sure to be hilarious or life-changing. If I didn’t use TikTok for a whole year, I’m absolutely certain that my grades would improve and perhaps my mood too. The irony of social media is that as we look at all the ‘perfect’ images of people, we become more and more drained by looking at a screen and therefore less likely to get up and get active. Scrolling on your phone at night is scientifically proven to make your sleep less beneficial so a year without social media would definitely make me more energetic and healthier. 

Spending time on Twitter is like constantly stepping inside a dangerous dungeon but for some reason I just find myself checking out the latest controversial tweet. Some of the replies you see on this platform are horrendous, with no care for people’s feelings or emotions. A DUP politician recently posted a picture of her dog, to which one user replied, “nice dog, is he a replacement for your dead disabled son?” This type of response is beyond horrific but this is what now passes as acceptable content. Seeing these types of comments every day desensitises us to the harsh world we’ve now created. When Elon Musk is prepared to pay €44 billion for Twitter, it’s clear just how profitable it is, but it is also highly dangerous and has a severe impact on people’s mental health. The case of Caroline Flack typifies what I mean. A year without Twitter would shield me from the crass and brutal nature of social media where anonymous trolls can say whatever they please, with little to no censorship.

Time spent with my family has definitely decreased over the years. When I was younger, I would spend loads of time in the backyard playing football with my three brothers. There were plenty of fights and arguments but there were a lot of good times and a lot of memories made as we played out FA Cup Finals and World Cup Finals, pretending to be Ronaldo and Messi or Rooney and Lampard. 

Now when I think about how we spend our time together, each of us are in our rooms either on our phones or playing video games. There are weeks in the house where we barely see one another and everyone is so busy on their phones that even when we are in the same room, it’s impossible to have a decent conversation. 

If I were to remove myself from social media for a whole year, I would like to think that I would spend a lot more time talking and socialising with my family and friends. When I think of my family, it saddens me that the most prominent memories are from over ten years ago and that we’ve not been making the same memories because we are stuck on our phones. A whole year without social media would be a big help in getting my family together again.

It is said that technology is a great servant but a terrible master and the same quote applies to social media. It is useful if used in the correct way but nowadays it seems that social media is using us and we seem to be powerless to stop it. I think a year without social media would be wonderful, in fact I’m just going to put a message on Twitter here telling everyone my plans. (Only joking)

Share this:

Leave a comment cancel reply.

• Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
• Subscribe Subscribed
• Copy shortlink
• Report this content
• View post in Reader
• Manage subscriptions
• Collapse this bar