The Negative Impact of Social Media - Coursework Example

The Negative Impact of Social Media A.J. Gardner Oakland 3/3/15 Social media over the last several years have become a large partof a teenager’s life. The impacts of these social media sites can be viewed as a positive in a teen’s life, but in the end it really only hurts them. The effects of over using social media sites have many negative impacts on someone’s life. Their schoolwork, social skills, views of themselves, can be affected tremendously. An increase in cyber-bullying can arise from teens over using these sites. Teenagers of modern day have been considered more connected more than any other group worldwide. This has been possible through advances in social media. Over the past nine years, the use of social media by teenagers has dramatically increased, which causes a matter of concern. Healey explains that social media can be referred to as websites and applications that allow users to develop and share content and participate in social networking (2011). Social media is a vast form of communication that has today permeated the teenagers to nearly all aspect of modern culture. Teenagers continuously are exposed to all kinds of social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and Instagram. However, teenagers tend to devote a large amount of time to social media, and this has been a negative impact. Many teenagers are exposed to various dangers online from addiction to cyber bullying and from the false sense of connection to declining social skills. For a fact, social media has been spreading like a fire, and this sensation triggers major impacts because teenagers can access it anytime. Social media is addictive to teenagers The engagement in anything or use at an extreme can result to negative impacts such as addiction, and social media is an example of such an entity. An addiction comes from overuse of social media, and that has been a worrying trend. It can be evident that teenagers who should be spending more time learning new concepts in school or concentrating fully on their studies are leaning towards spending more time on these social networking sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and others. This disturbance is resulting in poor scores and performance in many institutions of learning. Healey explains that this portrays the negative impacts of social media on current teenagers (2011). These young teenagers lack good grades and concentration they require in order to attain good grades at school due to the fact that most of their time is spent on social network websites. Today, teenagers find their homework less exciting due to other contents that they can explore on social media. Another concern for the over use of social media is the negative impact it has on the sleep schedule of a teenager. Teenagers are losing an important amount of sleep because they are spending time on social media sites before they go to sleep. The overriding obsession with social networking sites like Facebook, twitter among others has seen teenagers skip or limit time for sleep which translate to mental strain while learning during the day. It is worth to note that teenagers need to grow physically and mentally with significant emphasis on considerable sleeping time. Besides, day time seems to be tight and they are left with night in which they would rather sacrifice sleep for social media interactions and games. The result is evident in the fading performance in school and general increasing emergence of social ills among the youths. The obscenity that characterize internet has substituted the morally acceptable practices and plays key role in enticing the teenagers to explore beyond their imagination hence complete ignorance on the benefits of sleep. Declining social skills Social media has negatively impacted the social skills of its networkers. There is the society that is established traditionally to be more socially bonded through the interaction and provision of companionship. However, much of the teenagers or the younger generations rarely interact socially apart from when in school and work, places where social interaction is effectively monitored and minimal. According to Larry, these social networks provide a teenager the ability to quickly and easily share detailed information about upcoming events that will be occurring, various quotes that inspire, a given irritating experience, and even personal pictures of a typical life experience that occurs throughout their day (2011). “Social media has created a worrying breach in the ability of a young generation to communicate and interact with one other” (Webster, 2010). Many teenagers today prefer being glued to various sites instead of the traditional social interaction. Moreover, children no longer play together like people back in the days did; they network. Adults rarely seek physical companionship; in its place, many choose to network and have limited or no physical contact. Social media causes a false sense of connection Social media sites always make it more difficult for teenagers to separate between the meaningful relationships they create in the real world, and the numerous casual relationships formed through these social media sites. There has also been a significant generational gap that is fast creeping into the society due to teenager’s overreliance on internet (Ellen ,2012).Through social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter, teenagers are able to create many mingle relationships and “these relationships are many times with individuals they hardly know” (O’Keefee & Pearson, 2011). They are focusing so much of their psychic energy and time on these meaningless relationships, the most important relationship, they fear, will weaken. This is in a way has a negative impact on them and causes a false sense of connection. Cyber-bullying Social networking is never as safe as it is. It does not protect teenagers as they are used and abused through cyber bullying, imposter profiles, and sexual harassment. The closeness provided by social networks is accessible to predators and the same time friends. Teenagers particularly are vulnerable to these practices of cyber-bullying where the perpetrators, anonymously and even posing as individuals their victims trust, terrorize people in front of their peers. Instances of cyber bullying are described as “mean emails or text messages, rumors that are sent by electronic email or posted on social network sites, and embarrassing photos, videos or fake profiles” (Webster, 2010). The problem arises because social networks do not screen any of the users and lack ways of knowing what kinds of group of individuals are using the social network. Thus, social media offers a hunting ground for cyber predators seeking out naïve networkers. Cyber bullies in many occasions also use social media as a convenient way to blast their prey. The worst negative impact has been when some teenagers get affected by this occurrence and end up killing one another and committing suicide. "43% of teenagers have been victims of social media" (Harris Interactive Cyber bullying Research Report, 2009) and surprisingly "almost 80 % of teens indicated that they either did not have parental guide or rules for Internet use or some amongst them found ways around the rules" (Harris Interactive Cyber bullying Research Report, 2009). This clearly shows how the incidents are impacting on young teenagers as parents rarely care what their youngsters do when they are alone. Moreover, devastation of these social media attacks leaves deep mental scars. Cyber-bullying has spread like bush fire widely among teens, according to a 2010 CBS News report 42% of teenagers reporting that they have been victims. False representation of people Posts on social media many times portray an idealized version of the reality, what something looks like, or details of how things are going. This leads users of social media to compare themselves constantly to others or think less of their individual lives. Assuming things are going well for individuals in teen’s newsfeed and they are having a rough day, of course this may likely negatively affect their mood (Madden et al., 2013). In 2012 a group of researchers in the UK surveyed social media users, 53% of whom stated that social networking had changed their behavior; 51% indicated that it was negative behavior due to decline in confidence from the fact that they compare themselves with other. These are obviously a great concern for just today, but the impact that this may bring to our population in the future (Atwood & Gallo, 2011). Social media plays a critical role in contemporary society. It has for years now provided the teens with the information they require and has much impact on their lives. Moreover, teenagers can access it anywhere and anytime. The use of social media has likewise increased because of uncountable means provided to teenagers. Social media has some advantages to it; however it is not a good idea to risk the lives of our future youth. The demerits of social media lead to major problems, which in totality dominate the benefits. Finally, the contents of social networks have become an obsession and create distractions between teenagers and their education. ReferencesTop of Form Bottom of Form Top of Form Atwood, J. D., & Gallo, C. (2011). The effects of the internet on social relationships: Therapeutic considerations. Bloomington, IN: Iuniverse Inc. Healey, J. (2011). Social impacts of digital media. Thirroul, N.S.W: Spinney Press. Madden, M, Lenhart, A, Cortesi, S, Gasser, U, Duggan, M, Smith, A, & Beaton, M (2013).Teens, social media and privacy. Retrieved from O’Keefee, G & Pearson, K .(2011). ‘The Impact of Social Media on Children, Adolescents, and Families’ Journal of PEDIATRICS, vol. 127, no. 4, pp. 800-804. Webster, R . (2010). ‘Cyber Bullying Statics’. Retrieved from http://www.bullyingstatistics.org/content/cyber-bullying-statistics.html Larry D. Rosen, (2011).Social Networking’s Good and Bad Impacts on Kids. American Psychological Association http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2011/08/social-kids.aspx Ellen Niemer, (2012). Teenagers and Social Media, Health. Alive publishing Group. http://www.alive.com/articles/view/23615/teenagers_and_social_media Bottom of Form Bottom of Form Bottom of Form Bottom of Form Bottom of Form Read More