You don't have to go far to find a Driving Instructor on social media that shares pictures of the people they've taught to drive passing their driving tests - but whilst I used to do that, I decided to stop it a few years ago, and this is why (spoiler alert: this isn't about GDPR).
Now I'm not generally a big fan of TV and as such I tend to read a lot when I get some spare time. I like a wide ranging selection of books and may be reading up to five at any one time with various subject matters - biography, fiction, self help, educational etc. In recent years, I've read quite a bit in psychology books about the reasons why we see so many people these days having problems with anxiety.
Whilst there are lots of different elements to the mental health problem, many of them appear to be down to the way we live our lives these days and there is a growing body of evidence that social media is contributing to the problem in a number of ways. Of particular interest to me (as a small business that relies on social media to reach it's customers), has been what I've read about how young people can be affected by likes, shares and comments.
Today's 18 year olds have grown up with social media and are used to all of their major achievements being shared immediately for all to see and seeing the number of likes going up and seeing the positive comments from their family and friends give their self esteem a nice boost.
The problem with it though, is that IF those likes aren't forthcoming; IF there are any negative comments made or IF the news either being shared or expected to be shared isn't as good as was planned, then this too, is immediately visible to everyone who knows you. It's this that creates pressure, particularly where the fact that results are expected at a particular time and date is common knowledge (GCSE or A level results etc) and the more successful you've been through life, the greater the pressure - it is common for me to meet young people, and parents, who are absolutely devastated by a failed attempt at a driving test because "they've never at failed anything before"
A few years ago, one or two of my customers started to talk about this pressure as they approached their tests. As the conversation developed, they said that whilst they themselves realised that there was a pass / fail element to the test and understood that there was a real possibility of them failing and requiring another attempt, they felt that others around them didn't share this realistic attitude. They went on to tell me that there was an expectation among parents, friends and family that they would pass their driving test with ease because the image created on social media was that 100% of my customers were passing their test 1st time (a claim I have never, ever made - my best year yielded a pass rate of 78% across the year and I'm consistently in the 65-75% bracket each year against a national average of around 50%)
I didn't think this was a healthy situation for anyone involved so for the past couple of years now, I've tried to cover subjects other than pupil success on my social media outputs. This doesn't attract as many likes, but it seems to help a little bit to reduce the instances of anxiety among my customers and contrary to what the social media marketing experts tell me, I haven't noticed any drop in the number of business enquiries coming through either!
And of course, it's GDPR compliant ;)
Nick Heath Driver Training is located in Rode Heath on the Staffordshire / Cheshire border and provides driving training services to those looking to either improve their driving or learn from scratch. In addition to media work, we conduct Taxi Driver Assessments for local authorities and offer Advanced Driver Training and Testing, Motorway Training and Fuel Efficient Driver Training alongside refresher courses and learner driving lessons. We are ORDIT registered to provide Driving Instructor Training and are listed on the DVSA's register of Fleet Trainers so we can help you with your business needs.
More details are available on our website www.nickheathdrivertraining.org.uk
