One of the dangers that it can have is the mental impacts that it has of teens. Teens talk about how they “often encountering racist or sexist or homophobic content in the digital dialogue.” This becomes one of the reasons that teens gets emotionally harmed. Social media can also destroy body image and lower self-esteem. But on the other hand, 52% of the all the teens who use social media say that it has mainly helped their friendship, while only 4 percent say it has mainly hurt their friendship. Also, 20 percent of all the teens say that it makes them feel more confident. This can be taken that it is very helpful for some people. Also, it makes them feel more at home. But this can also mean a sign of addiction when teens feel more at home on social media. This will become a distraction from the real world and cause depression. Another way that teens can be harmed mentally is body image. On social media people can post whatever they like, this can also include pictures of handsome people or beautiful women. The teens look through photos and expect that they are like them. But in reality, it is far of and can create mental sadness and destroy body image. These are just some of the ways mentally that teens are being affected by social media.
The second way that social media can have a negative impact on the teen is by cyber bullying and stalking. The internet is a very wide and open place, anyone in the world can be stalking you at this moment. For example “64% of teens with Twitter accounts say that their tweets are public, while 24% say their tweets are private”. This means that anyone on the internet can access and see the 64% of teens tweets, which might be personal. A study shows that more teens post their real names, interest and birth dates in 2012 than back in 2006. The risks of teens getting stalked and cyberbullied are increasing year and year. Cyberbullying can lead to the thought of taking their own life. Cyber bullying can also scar the teens for their whole life. They will often remember what happened and will never forget about it. Posting with care is a very important part of social media, many teens with that they have their accounts on private when it is public. Posting something on social media is very easy, but the aftermath of it can be bad. The post you posted yesterday can well be the biggest regret in your life. There was a research done by AVG Technologies, stating that almost one in three teens have regret posting something online because it was too personal. There are many people who do not do good in social media. These people tend to use personal information and pictures of teens to threaten them or blackmail them. These things can often lead to stress and depression.
Another way that teens can get impacted is the distraction and the decrease of academic success. It is scientifically proven that social media leads to in-productivity. Most teens who are addicted to social media comes back homes from school and straight on to their phones to chat about the day. This mostly continues on until the go to sleep. The amount of homework they do is minimal leading to the decrease of academic success. 90% of all teens in the US has used some kind of social media before. This means that the number of teens who are on their social media, not doing homework is increasing. Jennifer L. Walsh, of The Miriam Hospital’s Centers for Behavioural and Preventive Medicine, constructed a study which aimed to find out “how media use related to later school performance." Walsh and her colleagues interviewed 483 freshmen/women during from a northeastern university. As a result, researchers listed that cell phones, social networking, television and magazines had a severe impact on students' academic results for their fall semesters. Walsh further noted that students who spent more time engaging in these forms of media, had "fewer academic behaviours, such as completing homework and attending class, lower academic confidence and more problems affecting their school work, like lack of sleep and substance use.” Considering the large population of teens using social media, the future is not too promising.
There are still exceptions to this, teens who can manage their time on social media are able to get the academic success they worked for. There are many facts supporting that social media can be negative but, in some ways it can have a positive impact. Social media is a new way to socialise with your friends and the world. In this globalised world, the fastest way to spread your ideas is probably posting it on social media. With the overwhelming population on social media, it is very easy to find people with the same interests as you. There are many true believers of social media, they think that social media is the way to go and this is can only bring positive impacts for teens. Even with the instalment of social media the majority of the teens like to socialise and talk to they friends face to face. Social media is just helping them expand their ways to socialise. However, social media still has many negative impacts on teens. One of the biggest impacts that are lead from social media instalment is the lack of social skills in the teens. People from older generations learned how to communicate and interact long before social media was even a thought, but for the younger generations, they do not interact socially except at school and work, where social interaction is well monitored and minimal. Social networking has created a serious breach in the ability of young people to communicate and interact with each other. This leads to another problem. Job employers say that “many young people do not have the necessary verbal and social skills to obtain a job. Often, those lacking the verbal skills to land a job spend much time networking and texting on cell phones”. This means that engaging with social media can have a bigger impact of teens futures, not just the mental and health issues.
Conclusively, social networking can be very beneficial in the modern world. However, social media allows for unnecessary risks in privacy, safety, social skills, and health. One bad decision on social media can impact teens who still have a long way to go. Depression and lowering self-esteem are just a few ways that social media can have a mental issue. Privacy and Cyberbullying is an another way that social media can impact teens in a negative way, making your account and posts private is just one of the ways you can secure yourself from people who cyber bully and take personal information. Cyberbullying always happens, with the increasing population using social media the amount of people that are going to be impacted by cyber bullying is going to grow. The last way that I mentioned that can have a negative impact on teens is distraction and decrease in academic success. Social media often distracts the teens from doing homework for example. Teens always want to know how many people liked their post. This mostly works against them, acting as an obstacle to academic success. Keeping in mind that social media can have negative impacts, it is still important to understand that social media is a new way for teens to socialise with friends nearby or on the other side of the world.
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