memes school

Science Says Memes Can Help You Be Better At Studying

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Science memes 🔛🔝

According to researchers from the Ateneo de Manila University, memes can be a helpful tool in learning and retaining information.

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In an era of continued disinformation and increasing AI slop on social media, memes continue to be our online friends. It’s one of the few things we still enjoy about the internet, and we doubt memes will ever leave the internet zeitgeist. But while we consume it every day and send our favorite memes we come across on our feeds to our friends, that doesn’t mean they’re welcomed with open arms by parents. They often like to say that being on our phones and just scrolling through memes is bad for school. However, that may not be the case as memes might actually be good for your grades. Don’t believe us? Let science tell you otherwise.  

SCHOOL-APPROVED MEMES

Do memes help increase your grades and make you better at studying? That’s the case a study conducted by Alyanna Nicole Carlos and Emmanuel D. Delocado, faculty from the Biology Department of the Ateneo de Manila University, concluded to. The study, titled “Utilizing Internet Memes in Senior High School Biology to Improve Gen Z’s Academic Achievement, Attitude, and Self-efficacy,” was published in the Asian Journal of Biology Education in November 2024 and focused on the effect of memes on students studying biology. Specifically, 243 Grade 11 non-STEM students belonging to six sections of a private high school in the Philippines were recruited for the project so as to not have students predisposed to liking science and biology.  

SCIENCE MEMES

Per the study, memes were incorporated into the instructional materials for their lessons covering four topics: cellular division, DNA and RNA, central dogma, and Mendelian genetics. These aren’t exactly the most exciting topics to learn in school, so memes served as a visual tool to hopefully aid the students. That was the case as the results found that participants who were taught using memes scored 21% higher on their tests than their peers who were taught using traditional methods. 

Participants also reported enjoying their classes more using memes which made the lessons more exciting to learn and review, even going as far as to develop positive attitudes towards biology. “The use of memes in tackling a difficult topic and the creation of memes by the students helped the participants develop a positive attitude toward biology and higher sense of self-efficacy in biology,” the researchers wrote. 

MEMES

Rather than serving as a distraction as some might suspect, the researchers argued that memes can be a useful tool in increasing motivation, recall, and participation among students. “With memes embedded in the teacher lectures, our findings show that students felt more confident in understanding the concepts well, performing tasks better, and being successful in the course.” 

They concluded that memes are a net positive for students, at least when it comes to being used as a teaching aid for non-STEM students learning science and biology. “This study has shown that using memes in discussing Cellular Division and Genetics topics to non-STEM pre-university students improves their academic performance, attitudes towards science, and self-efficacy.” 

BACHELORS IN MEMEOLOGY

While this is one study and further research and experiments might get different results, the researchers were on to something with this. It’s no secret that Gen Z’s attention span is not the best, and studying what can be complex and technical concepts and topics won’t exactly have students’ attention in a chokehold. 

This study shows that there is a point to be made about teachers adapting teaching strategies to use memes and other Gen Z-coded methods to make lessons more relatable and accessible or even students using memes for their own study habits. Admit it, if your teachers started using memes in their presentations, you’d probably be more attentive during class. 

@inoue_429 9.81m/s^2💜 #floptok😍😍😭😌🤞💅💅slay💅 #fypシ゚viral #floptock #sciencememe #sciencememes #fypシ゚ ♬ original sound – ⚛️🧬Kuro_5.0🔭⚛️

The idea of using memes to teach science topics is also not a radical idea. Just search #ScienceTok or #FlopTok on TikTok, and you’ll find multiple videos with millions of views and hundreds of thousands of likes explaining scientific concepts through memes and edits. TBH, a photosynthesis fan edit doesn’t sound like a bad idea to learn about the process. Of course, this doesn’t mean we have to replace books and papers with memes and “____ core” videos, but let’s also not diminish outright the idea of using memes for good to help teach students. 

So, the next time someone tells you that memes are just a waste of time and won’t help you in school, tell them otherwise.  

If you want to read Carlos and Delocado’s full paper, you can do so here

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