teens and social media

As a result of rapid technological and digital developments, the impact of social media on our lives today cannot be overstated, with social networking being increasingly important in our everyday lives. However, focusing on youth is important, not just because this age demographic is at risk, but also because they make up the majority of users who use social media sites. Teenagers are transitioning from adolescence to maturity at this age, so it is a crucial time for them. Parents must be well-informed about the benefits and drawbacks of social networking in order to effectively guide their adolescent children through this stage. It is also of significant importance that parents are cognizant of their children’s social media activities so that they can help in curbing some of the negative online influences that have become rampant among our teenagers today. Hence, this paper gives an analysis of the positive and negative effects of social networking and actions that parents and caregivers can take to help monitor their children’s activities.

Disadvantages of Using Social Media on Teens

While social networking certainly plays a critical role in enlarging the social connections and getting knowledge on important skills, the shortcomings of the same cannot be overlooked. The lack of self-regulation and vulnerability to peer pressure makes teenagers prone to the negative effects of social networking such as cyber bullying, anxiety, depression and deterioration of school performance which can have very damaging side effects to the young children. Other problems such as addiction and low productivity levels, reduced social skills and sexting are other effects that remain a huge concern with social media exerting an immense and a virtually vicious impact over the lives of this young generation, influencing them in the following ways.

Cyber Bullying

Social media websites are becoming popular with cyber bullying and this has become a disturbing trend (Kavitha & Bhuvaneswari, 2016). Cyber bullying is common with people using the social media platforms due to the anonymity created and it ranges from intimidation, the use of threats and spiteful emails to anonymous activities such as trolling and online advances from strangers. Kavitha & Bhuvaneswari (2016) explain that trolling, the act of consciously imposing hatred, prejudice or bias towards a person often anonymously, is also a widespread form of cyber bullying in the social media platforms.

This kind of intimidation and threating is often disturbing and uncomfortable to the victims. Cyber bullying may seem as something inconsequential to the bully as they are made to believe that the impacts of the act are trivial. However, in truth, the effects of cyber bullying can be life threating to the extent that the victims become suicidal or psychologically disturbed. Unfortunately, the anonymous characteristic of social media interactions and networking makes it a challenge for parents, caregivers or even guardians to identify that their children are victims of the act.

Cyber bullying experienced by children during their teenager years can lead to numerous detrimental issues such as depression and deterred education and social relationships with some of these effects being carried right through their adulthood years. Additionally, teenagers who experience cyber bullying are more likely to get poor grades in their school work, have low self-esteem as well as develop thoughts of self-harm, all of which could extremely alter and harm the course of a young person’s life.





Anxiety and Depression

Researches are keen to notice that the cases of depression among teenagers have been on the rise over the past years. Kavitha & Bhuvaneswari (2016) assert that young people who spend a lot of their time on social media applications are most likely to suffer from anxiety and dejection. This can be attributed to the unrealistic expectations that are set in the platforms that subsequently leave the teenagers with low self-regard and hence a frantic quest for perfectionism which exhibits itself as depression and anxiety disorders (Barker , 2012). Without a doubt, the increased use of social media among the young people has been closely linked to the escalating cases of depression and psychological distress among teenagers who are addicted to social media networking.

Deprivation of Sleep

Ideally, sleep and mental health are closely related and there is a closer inter-connection between the two since lack of sleep can lead to poor mental health. To ensure that the growth and development of the young adults is not altered or hindered, enough sleep is of significant importance. Kavitha & Bhuvaneswari (2016) revealed that the escalating use of social media among teenagers is largely contributing to stunted and delayed growth due to lack of sufficient sleep among youths addicted to social networking. For example, teenagers have confessed to getting late in bed and waking up at the middle of the night just to chat with their friends, leading them to constantly feel tired and sleepy at school and eventually affecting their school performance and grades.

Low Self-Esteem

Self-esteem and body image is normally a huge concern for many teenagers. It is at this time that the young adults are transitioning into adulthood and opinions from friends and other people would really have an influence on their self-esteem. Due to the heavy use of social media where many people try to be perfectionists, teenagers find themselves with immense pressure and a heightened desire to change their appearances and lifestyles (Khouli, 2013). This can all be attributed to the fact that social media instills low self-esteem to persons who may not be too comfortable with their lifestyles or their bodies and as a result the adolescents develop feelings of inadequacy which can be damaging to their growth and development.

Addiction and Decrease in Productivity Levels

Social media is ideally very engaging and addictive and its users often find themselves spending too much of their time on the platforms. This makes them waste a lot of time and as a result they find themselves neglecting their school work, household chores, extra-curricular activities and even have no time for their friends and family.

Destruction of Social Skills

According to Bolton & Migchels (2013), online activities can negatively impact on its user’s social life by reducing their participation in important offline activities. Essentially, social networking can be very addictive, making teenagers spend a huge part of their time behind closed doors just engaging with virtual friends (Vural, 2015). As a result of this virtual engagement and addiction, the social skills of teenagers are negatively affected and socialization in the real world becomes a huge challenge. Their social gatherings are hampered because surfing the social networking sites keeps them more engaged for which they are bound to ignore their other significant social events present in their lives (Khurana, 2015). Kavitha & Bhuvaneswari (2016) goes further to explain that students who use social media regularly may drop their ability to take part in face to face communication. Even if the world is revolving around technology, teenagers must be taught and know how to communicate in the real world.

Sexting

According to Bolton & Migchels, (2013), users of social networks are more likely to get involved in sexual behaviors than the non-users. Sexting can be defined as the act of sending sexually provocative pictures and explicit messages to each other which has sadly become a norm among teenagers using social media platforms. While teenage boys may resort to sending explicit messages, teenage girls will most probably send nude and indecent photos of themselves. Nevertheless, the permanence and pervasiveness of the internet makes it a fertile ground for disseminating such information to the point of getting viral. Sexting can be a cause of personal disgrace, distress and embarrassment if the messages and pictures are leaked to numerous people.

Reduced Performance in Schools

Evidently, teenagers who spend most of their time on social media will have their education taking a negative and deteriorating path. Many of the texts and messages often threaten to erode the meaning and importance of the things learnt in school. Proper spelling and correct sentence structures are replaced by abbreviations that largely wear down the teachers’ efforts and are damaging as they may cause permanent decline in the performance of the children’s school work.

Additionally, teenagers have become quite proficient in using so much non-academic and informal statements such that they begin to use the words in their school assignments (Shabir & Hameed, 2014). Too much time spent on social media as well significantly reduces the students focus on learning and retaining information.





Advantages of Using Social Media on Teenagers

Social networking can be unsafe but if used properly, the networking sites can have reasonably positive effects on today’s generation (Sinha & Yadav, 2016). Also, there are numerous educational benefits that the teenagers can acquire and derive from the use of the platforms if used wisely. The opportunity to have access and interact with different and diverse people from across the globe unlocks the floodgates of experience and information and lets students have a more informed outlook on the different spheres of life. Social media also provides a larger platform for the teenagers to engage in meaningful conversations that are of significant importance to the society with the benefits of the same discussed as below.

Helps Develop Awareness:

Today, most teenagers are found to live very sheltered and shielded lives. But with exposure to various social networking platforms, they can acquire information and develop awareness on various issues affecting the society such as cultural, religious and political issues of a country. Certainly, this awareness is important if a society wants to nurture and groom a generation of socially responsible citizens. With new social media platforms regularly coming up and blaring about the world happenings, teens can only take advantage of this and realize that ultimately there is more to the world than just what is happening in their neighborhoods. This information can be quite useful and enables them to make informed decisions based on what they know.

Khurana, (2015) asserts and confims that social networking sites offer teenagers with a platform to connect with new people, share experiences and gain exposure. The young adults come to terms with gaining relevant and quick information about what goes around.





Social Media as a Convergence Tool

According to Bertoncini (2013), the social networking tools are proposed not only as a connector to not lose contact with friends, but also as a convergence tool between people who share the same life passions and desires. Additionally, social media has served as one of the best means to voice opinions on anything that seems to be uncomfortable or suppressing. Discussions and news forums can help teenagers exchange important ideas, opinions and insights that would help them in their growth and development. Social media often acts as a link between the talented young adults and those who are in search of similar talents. For example, job portals such as LinkedIn act as an intermediary between the job seekers and the employers.

Carrying out Research

Essentially, social media platforms can act as a great study and research tool for teenage students. The young adults can use the applications to engage and ask each other questions as well as engage in meaningful forums that would assist them in their school work. The adolescents can use these tools to also conduct extensive research on their assignments and schoolwork.

Creates Creativity and Innovativeness

Social media helps to promote creativity and innovation among the youths (Kavitha & Bhuvaneswari, 2016).The social media sites are often dependent on the active participation of the users and how frequent they get to share information amongst themselves. The regular sharing of ideas makes teenagers more engaged and hence very creative and inventive as they have to come up with new contents every time they need to share thoughts and opinions. Not only is the information that they share unique, but with the new social networking sites that keep emerging, the teenagers are only forced to become innovative and creative. This becomes very valuable as such creativity is carried forth to their adult lives where they assist in coming up with new innovations and inventions in their work places.

Enhances skills and abilities

According to Kavitha & Bhuvaneswari (2016), social networking provides the young generation with a chance to train their social skills. The social media sites have given the teenagers a platform in which they can enhance their skills and capabilities. Clearly, as a result of the boundless exposure that the young adults receive while using the online platforms interacting with different people from diverse backgrounds, their skills are also improved. Additionally, the teenagers acquire skills that enable them to analyze, evaluate and construe different situations contextually, making them cultivate skills that assist them prepare for situations that would occur much later in their lives.

Strategies to Controlling Social Media use Among Teenagers

Obviously, it is evident that if the shortcomings of the use of social media platforms among teenagers are not well checked, physical, emotional and even academic growth and development can be hampered. Hence, parents, guardians and care givers need to be conscious of the negative effects that social media can have on their children and hence be able to regulate the amount of time that they spend online. Anderson (2016) says that when it comes to observing their children’s digital use and interactions, parents need to take a hands-on monitoring approach. To help in curbing the negative effects brought about by social media use, parents and caregivers can:

Come up with ways and strategies of limiting the time their children spend online. This can be achieved by coming up with a strict schedule that should be followed strictly and has time allocated for each activity.

Take initiatives of exploring technology and learning how to use the digital gadgets as well as be able to navigate through them. This way, the parents will be able to easily follow up on the activities that their children engage themselves in.

Educate and organize talks with their children. Parents should often talk with their teens about the appropriate and inappropriate behavior in various spaces, from what they share and view online to how they should conduct themselves in their everyday lives (Anderson, 2016). Educating one’s children on the dangers of overly involving themselves and spending too much time online can help them understand that they need to use the media applications sparingly so that they can also concentrate on the growth and development of other spheres of their lives.

Download a monitoring app. This can be a helpful strategy to parents who are busy and do not have enough time to stay with their minors and monitor what they are doing. By having a monitoring app, a parent will be able to check and analyze his or her children’s use of the applications at the end of the day (Anderson, 2016). This eventually helps the parents keep a close eye on their children as well as help and correct them when they go astray.

Conclusion

In conclusion, social media has defined the millennia generation that we have today with technology and conformation to social networks becoming the face of the society we live in. The modern-day sites of social networking have inventive scientific capabilities that can offer the best opportunities and services for its users and eventually allow them achieve all forms of communication and information. Just like a coin with two sides, social networking sites also have ways in which they unfavorably affect the teens. This young generation often spends much of their time online which sadly keeps them away from the happenings of the real world and their own natural surroundings. They find it difficult to attend social gatherings because surfing through the sites keeps them engrossed, making them ignore other significant social events in their lives. Essentially, this addiction can negatively impact their growth and development in several spheres of their lives which are equally important. The teenagers have become adopters of our generation and have become engrossed and immersed in this technological lifestyle. This has led to cyber bullying, anxiety and depression, loss of sleep, low self-esteem and a negative effect on their school performance. These are some of the serious negative effects that arise as a result of heavy use and addiction of social networking. With such overwhelming evidence of the negative effects of social networking on our youngsters, parents and caregivers are tasked with the enormous responsibility of monitoring and controlling how their children use their digital gadgets. However, the positive side of the same cannot be overlooked with benefits such as assisting in carrying out research and helping in building creativity and innovation among the young adults being obvious and noticeable



















References

Anderson, M. (2016). Parents, Teens and Digital Monitoring. Pew Research Centre, 1-34.

Barker, V. (2012). A Generational Comparison of Social Networking Site Use: The Influence Of Age And Social Identity. Int’l. J. Aging And Human Development, 1-25.

Bertoncini, G. T. (2013). Understanding the Influence of Social Media on Authentic Leadership Dimensions and Education from the Millennials’ Perspective. Maria Teresa Schmalz, 1-136.

Bolton, R. N., & Migchels, N. (2013). Understanding Generation Y and Their Use of Social Media: A Review and Research Agenda. Emeraldinsight, 1-23.

Kavitha, S., & Bhuvaneswari, R. (2016). Impact of Social Media on Millennials – A Conceptual Study. Journal of Management Sciences and Technology, 1-7.

Khouli, M. E. (2013). The Most Important Negative Aspects of Using Social Networking Affecting the Family Stability in Abu Dhabi- A Pilot Study. International Journal of Engineering and Technology, 1-6.

Khurana, N. (2015). The Impact of Social Networking Sites on the Youth. Mass Communication & Journalism, 1-4.

Shabir, G., & Hameed, Y. (2014). The Impact of Social Media on Youth: A Case Study of Bahawalpur City. Asian Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities, 1-20.

Sinha, A., & Yadav, R. K. (2016). Social Media: Positive Vs Negative Effect on Young Generation. International Journal of Science Technology and Management, 1-8.

Vural, O. F. (2015). Positive and Negative Aspects of Using Social Networks in Higher Education: A Focus Group Study. Academic Journals, 1-20.