Social Media Effect on High School Students Teenagers - Essay Example

Student’s name Institution Course: Social Media Effect on High School Students "Teenagers" Professor Date Introduction The 21st century has witnessed rise and use of online communities. Social networking sites connect individuals to wider networks of relationships. The emergence of new forms of social media has made it to be widely used by teenagers and high school students. Social sites such as Facebook, twitter, MySpace, YouTube among others have gained my popularity among the youths and high school students. Teenagers are among the most avid users of technology in general and social network sites in particular (Lenhart, Madden, Macgill & Smith, 2007b). Rideout et al., (2010) notes that the youth and teenagers spent nearly 10 hours per day using technology, with socially networked media playing a key role in their lives. The modern social media is very different from the traditional media forms but it still has some similarities. The wide application of social media among the teenagers and students has brought significant changes in students’ lives and the general learning process. In this essay, I am going to analyse very aspects concerning application and use of social media among the teenagers and high school students. I will analyse instructors roles concerning social media use among the students, building successful social media leaders, activities that students may engage other than social media, impacts of social media to education and teenagers, Edmodo and Bitstrips use, other attractive social media other than social media and psychological effects of the use of social media. Social Media Similarities in Ancient Ages and (History) Social media has evolved over ages, new forms of social media has replaced the traditional social media forms. For instance emergence of Facebook, twitter, instagram, whatsapp and others have replaced traditional social media forms. Despite the emergence of new forms of social media, there are wide ranges of similarities between the different forms of social media. One of the similarities is the use of social media to create company among its members. Both traditional and modern forms of social media are used as a way of creating company among its users by bringing together. Users of a certain social media like Facebook or twitter in a certain school or village tend to usually closely linked and in many occasions tend to be friends. Similarly, traditional social media was mainly used for socialising and thus bringing people close to each other and making them to be friends. Ancient and modern social media are used as a medium of communication in the society. While using the ancient social media, information could be communicated among the interacting parties. Similarly, modern social media is used to pass information to involved parties as they use a particular social media. Both ancient and modern social media forms were used for leisure spending. When people wanted to spend and enjoy their leisure time in ancient times, they could sometimes turn to social media to spend on it. People could effective enjoy their leisure by interacting in groups. Currently, more leisure time is spend in social media in chatting, playing on-line games, twitting an reading social media interaction jokes, stories and interesting social happenings. Spending leisure time in social media has gained much interest due to the easy at which people can access it through various gadgets like phones, laptops, computers, and iPods among other emerging electronics. These have made it accessed at the place of convenience to the students and teenagers. Instructor’s Role on Social Media Teachers, parents and information specialists are the main instructors to high school students and teenagers on social media activities and lessons. They have a big role to play to in students and teenagers lives. They are supposed to teach them on the use of various types of social media. Social media is a field that changes every now and then and therefore the instructors are suppose to teach the students on emerging social media and how to use them. Information specialists are instrumental in guiding the students and teenagers on the use of information technology in the social media sector. Some students may find it hard to adopt to the base of changing technology and thus necessary to be guided on its use. They are supposed to introduce students and teenagers on the impacts of social media use to them and the society in general. Emergence of the modern social media has come up with both positive and negative impacts to the society. It is the responsibility of the instructors to guide the students in understanding these impacts of social media. Some students and teenagers are affected negatively by the happenings they experience in use of the social media, at this point it is the role of instructors to step in and offer guidance and counselling to the students. While using social media like Facebook, twitter, whatsapp, instagram among others, they may meet with horror experiences, sex texting materials, pornography, and other psychologically disturbing events. These may make teenagers to start behaving abnormally. The instructors should be able to notice such change in behaviour and be in a place How to Build Successful Social Media Leaders For good use of social media, there is a need of there being good social media leaders. Successful social media leaders in terms of both the students and instructors will enable the harnessing of positive impacts of social media while reducing its negative impacts. To have good leaders, instructors must be able to make sense of social network sites as they evolve. Social sites are ever changing due to replacement of new forms, (Ahn, 2010). The instructors and students must be able to know and understand the applications of emerging technologies and media. This will enable them to understand their use and be in place to know both their advantages and disadvantages. Good understanding of technological field by instructors is cruel since it puts them in good positions to guide students on their applications. Measures should be put in place for the leaders to have good leadership, good communication skills, good teaching skills in order to be understood well by their followers and students. Instructors should be well informed on the psychological effects of social media and how to offer guidance and counselling to affected students. The wide applications of social media among the students sometimes results to psychological effects due to the pictures, videos, news and people they interact-with. Social media leaders should have an understanding on ways of avoiding negative effects of social media in order to educate other students and social media users on how to avoid them. Parents at home need to be informed of modern social media in order to be in a place of offering guidance to their children on their use. Social media leaders should know how to notice abnormal behaviours resulting from continual use of social media. Well informed and guidance in the use of social media among its leaders will ensure teenagers and students are not drastically affected by its use. Things to do Better than Social Networking Social networking has continued to consumer a lot of time for teenagers despite there being other important activities that they can spend their time-on. According to Hunt, 2011, teenagers can spend their time on the following activities instead of social network sites: reading a book, taking a walk, baking cookies, going to park, calling someone, playing games on handheld gaming system and board games, going out for a cup of tea, taking up a hobby and planning face-to-face party with friends. These events will give teenagers time to spend wisely their time and leisure without necessarily sticking to social media networking. Reading books Teenagers should spend part of their time in reading books instead of only social networking. There is wide range of types of books that different kind of individuals can choose to read. For instance, they can read novels, magazines, sports articles, newspapers, school materials and books, scholarly articles and books among other kind of books. Reading will not only provide means of spending their leisure but also provide them with the opportunity of enriching their knowledge and skills. Taking a walk Instead of spending their time indoors sticking to their computers, teenagers and student can spend their time on talking a walk. This reduces the discomfort of staying in one place while giving them physical exercise necessary for their bodies. Baking cookies Teenagers can spend part of their time in improving their cooking skills instead of social networking. They can practice cooking skills like baking of cakes and dough among other cooking skills. This helps them in improving their household skills and prepares them for future lives. Going to parks Teenagers and students can spend their leisure time by visiting local parks. This gives them an opportunity to enjoy a lot offered by the parks. They will enjoy nature, picnic areas, trails and many face-to-face experiences not offered on-line. Calling someone Social networking in many occasions does not offer those interacting opportunities to talk to each other, they largely give them opportunities to chat and read what is posting by others. Students and teenagers should spend some time in making calls to their friends and relatives to see how they are. In many circumstances, a call will be highly appreciated. Playing games on handheld gaming system They can spend part of their time in playing games for fun on handheld systems instead of bothering each time free time to social network. Electronics like Nintendon DS can be used to play a wide range of games. Such games can be played individually or with other family members. Playing a board game and watching TV Playing board games will give individuals opportunities to enjoy great conversation not easily available in computer social networking. Time can be spend also in watching various programs in the TV like news, documentaries, videos, sports, educative programs among other programs. These give individuals a chance to effectively spend their time. Going out for a cup of coffee Visiting a coffee house gives individuals a chance to wind down. These is important in brain relieving by avoiding the possibility of remaining indoors operating computer and social networking that is common to teenagers and students during their leisure time. Taking up a hobby Instead of spending leisure time on social networking, teenagers and high school students and spend it on improving their hobbies and talents. These gives them time to rediscover and built more on their hobbies and talents. This can help them in enhancing their areas of specialisation. Planning out and having a party Time spending on social networking can be reduced by planning and holding parties with on-line and other type of friends. Parties will give online friends to physically hang out with each other. Teenagers and high school students should use some of these methods to reduce time spend on social networking. Benefits and positives of social media for education and teenagers As much as many people are bedevilling the effects of social media on the teenagers, it is worth noting that the same social media has some positive impacts on these kids. Lemke & Coughlin, (2009), notes that social technology positively influence students' communication skills, relationships between students and teachers and quality of schoolwork. According to a research that ‘Office of the Disability and Employment Policy’ conducted in USA in 2012, one of the advantages of social media to the teenagers is that they help them keep in touch with their old friends. This is possible because of the frequent communication among the friends unlike the olden days when communication to a friend would only be involving either visiting them, sending a letter or even making an expensive call if you happened to have their contacts. Through the social media like Facebook, the teens can just institute a name search and if the friend has an account with the media, it would be very easy to locate them. Additionally the report indicates that, these teens are able to make new friends and expand their social networks. Furthermore, these teenagers can also create their personal homepages or rather fan pages. This would encourage their independence in expressing themselves and could make them to be vocal individuals in the social media and even in the future real world as the report alludes. They are also at liberty to follow fan pages of groups that they like; for example, a person who likes updates on political matters would ‘follow’ their favourite candidates fan pages and even media stations and channels. This would allow them to keep at brisk with the current happens of their own interests. More so, the above report also indicate that these students will be able to keep in touch with some of the celebrities that they support by constantly engaging them on the social media. Another area where these social media assist the teenagers is on dimension of their educational development. In this regard, it is important to note that some of these teenagers do conduct discussions on their class assignments and even recent events on the social media (Kirsh, 2010). Therefore, someone can argue that the social media provide these teens with a perfect platform to discuss their assignments outside the classroom at any time and within their convenience. Discussion of their schoolwork would definitely boost their class performance and enhance their mastery of what the teachers instruct them in class. Kirsh (2010) argues that social media is a very powerful research tool to these school-going teenagers. Most of these youths get to know a lot about drugs and their usage on some of these social media that tend to take advantage of the social media as a vessel of sensitizing the youth on the usage of drugs. Drugs and sexual health care are a bit related. Thus, he argues that these students also get to know much on their sexual health on the same social media. The enormous knowledge that these social media tend to provide generously to these teenagers is quite valuable and the stakeholders must recognise this fact too. Kirsh, (2010) posits that social media helps these teenagers in sharpening of their technological knowhow. Without a doubt, the world has undergone paradigm shift since the invention of computers and technology keeps changing now and then at a very faster rate. In this regard, social media has been helping these teens to catch up with the new technology in the market. Other than the aforesaid advantages, Dill (2013) summarises some of these accruing benefits of social media to these teens. He says that many teenagers can ask questions more willingly on online than on face-to-face basis. This is because they can express their feelings and thoughts more easily when the third parties or even the person they are addressing can never discover their identities sparing them the fear of rejection or the common stigmatization that is a common feature in real life situation. What this means is that experts or even the people that these teens consult for advice on the websites can readily solve the issues that they raise. He goes ahead to state that teenagers who have weak socializing skills can improve on this in anonymity. Those who have weaknesses in communication can also chat with other fellows since the social media provide them with enough time to review their writings. Edmodo as a social network for school Edmodo is a renowned social media that allows for the interaction between teacher-student or student-student relationship and even involving parents in discussion of class assignments. According to ‘The Australian Psychological Society’ (2010), many people and especially the students who have adopted this technology in learning normally refer to this social media as the ‘Facebook’ of schools due to the interaction that it creates between the students, teachers, and parents. It is of essence to note that the services that the Edmodo as a company provides are all for free provided that one possesses a computer with stable network connection. The teacher can proceed to create the class account, or rather the school account depending on the number of Grades that they teach. Signing up with Edmodo is very simple because it requires very little and the most basic information from the person who wants to have the account. According to the user’s guide provided on the website, Edmodo is designed in a very user friendly manner. Once the teacher has created the account, the website would grant the teacher permission to post notes on the website for their students. Notes can be typed on the website or the teacher can attach a file that contains the notes that they wish to avail to the students. There is also the option that permits these teachers to share a link that the students can access once they log into the school or class account. The teacher is also at liberty to create a library for the students. On the same note, it is also possible to schedule a message for the students. Edmodo also gives the teachers an option of ‘Alerts’. This option enables the teachers to communicate to the students some of the important messages. On this option, they are able to provide the students with some information such as exam dates, changes in class time, absenteeism if anticipated among other things. This would ensure that the students are always up to date on matters pertaining to their coursework, class or even the school by extension. The available user’s guide on their website indicates that teachers can also issue assignments to their students on this website. The website is tailored in such a manner that teachers can select the level of class to which the assignment belongs. Subsequently, the teacher can give assignments to different Grades using the same account. The tutor can also type the assignment on the website or attach a file that contains the assignment. Alternatively, they can also avail the assignment by providing the link to the assignment on the same website. Additionally, the tutor can also provide the revision materials and the necessary books for the assignment by adding then into the library. Edmodo also provide an option of creating the deadline for the submission of the assignment after which it locks automatically and submission after the deadline becomes impossible. Edmodo allows the teachers to create quizzes for their students. Through this option, they can create a quiz from the website or even upload an already created quiz on the website so that the students are able to retrieve it. The quiz created so far could be having short answers, multiple choices, ‘true or false’, ‘yes or no’, filling the balk and even marching as these are the only options that Edmodo provides. Edmodo also make it possible for the teachers to mark all these assignments online and post the results on the same website. Students can then access their results by viewing the ‘polls’. Additionally, parents can also track the progress of their kids’ performance through their students’ accounts or by creating their own accounts. Additionally, these parents can also help out their kids in doing the assignments and discuss the progress of their children with their teachers. Edmodo also provide the option of blogging for those with great ideas that they would like the public to get to know. This social media also allows the teachers to create groups for their students and to issue group assignments. Bitstrips social network as a tool for teaching Though not popular as Edmodo, Bitstrips is a very powerful teaching tool if the teachers can use it well (Dill, 2013). This is because it integrates the use of comic images and captions as a means of communicating to the students, which is more comprehendible and enjoyable as one of the teaching methods. The teachers issue assignments to students that would require them to create different comic images to convey different types of messages that they want to pass across to the students depending on the subjects that they are learning. The services of Bitstrips are not very free. As par the information obtained from their website, the company gives a limited period to which the teacher can use the trial version (normally one month) after which they will have to pay in order to continue enjoying the services. Dill, (2013) argues that using this social media requires a lot of creativity from the users. Arguably, this could be the reason as to why there is a comprehensive user’s guide on the website to assist the learners and even the teachers on how to create these comic images. Unlike Edmodo that has neither the limit for the number of classes nor the capacity of the class; this social media has a room capacity of 40 students only from the information that is available on their website. This would mean that the more students you have, the more Bitstrips would require you to pay. It is quite evident that operating this social website in a school is more expensive than the free Edmodo. From the user’s guide that was retrieved from their website, this social media also provides the teacher with an option of adding students to this account. The students can then log in using the course code that the teacher used in creating the account. Upon logging in, the students can get access to the activities that the tutor would like them to work on and then submit them online after completion. Each activity would vary depending on the subject and even the topic of interest. After completion of the activity, the teacher can decide to post the comic of the students for public viewing in the provided ‘gallery’ or limit its access to them only. The guide indicates that these tutors can also create their own comic images for illustration on how to create them or as part of the tutorials in teaching some concepts of the subjects they are handling. The teacher can also create a standard character of their choice to use in the subsequent comic images in the lessons that would follow. Other attracting media than social networks Indeed, other social networks are still very attractive to the teenagers. Some of them include TV channels, Radio stations, Novels, among others. ‘The Australian Psychological Society’, (2010) notices that TV is still very competitive in the contemporary world of today as far as the world of social media is concern. Most of these TV channels have undergone major restructuring and heavy investments in technology. This report says that the above reason explains why most of the countries in the globe have switched from the analogue reception of signal to what most people nowadays refer to as digital reception. People are now days able to watch real time TV programmes on online basis. This report ascertains that the fan base of TV programs have even increased in the recent past. This is because most of the world TV stations provide specialized programs, for example Aljazeera is well known to be providing news that are more of Arabic countries while the CNN tend to provide news that target the western countries. Super sport, as the name suggests has also specialized in disseminating sports news and covering live sports’ events. Some channels such as Channel ‘O’ deals primarily with the world of music while other specializes in other areas such as Cartoons, African Movies, Action Movies, Mexican Movies, and Documentaries among others. Therefore, it is very unlikely to find an individual who has no single TV channel of interest even if it were a teenager. The report also says that books and novels have also tried to maintain their space in the arena of social media despite the dwindling interest of the youth in reading books. Some of the books that have continued to be on top of the chart are like the famous erotic romance novel ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ by E.L. James who is a British female author. Fobres journals that are freely available on their websites indicate that this book alone sold over 70million copies worldwide and another copy rights to 37 countries by the end of 2012. This book holds Guinness world book of records as the fastest selling paper work ever. Fobres journal indicates that ‘Twilight’ was the work of Stephenie Meyer back in 2005, which was the bestseller list within a month after its release and went ahead to top the list during the same year. Experts ranked this book as the best children book in 2005, proceeded to win an award in 2008 as the biggest selling book, and maintained position 2 for the same award in the subsequent year. Different scholars have also translated this book to over 37 various languages all over the world. These two books can illustrate how powerful other media still are and the viral social network media cannot suppress their effect in teaching. The Australian Psychological Society (2010) report also shows that Radio stations also continue to fight for the market share as a media. However, its use has reduced drastically due to the stiff and unhealthy completion in this market. The adoption of online radio stations has not improved on the number of its listeners. The psychological effect of social media The psychological effects of social could be far reaching, whether positive of negative (Dill, 2013). The first and foremost effect of these social media is the developing of what scientists call disconnect anxiety. This is the negative feeling that people who are used to being ‘connected’ cannot be able to log in or rather access the internet. Majority of people develop this kind of psychological trauma because they are used to the connection to internet that they even take it for granted. They also want to stay ‘connected’ to the internet so bad that if they realise that they are not, they feel as if there is something so important that they are missing making them do develop the mental condition of disconnect anxiety. Other than this, the common and the most conspicuous negative effect of social media is cyber bullying. This is the use of information technology to harass its users. According to Ybarra & Mitchell (2008) bullying and sexual solicitation is rampant in the social media. Females are the highest targets of social media cyber bullying is occurs mainly through accessing their accounts and posting disgusting comments, videos, messages among other things. Office of the Disability and Employment Policy (2012) report notes that some people also consider the profile of their friends on the social media such as, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Whatsapp, and many others as portraying their true personality, which in most instances it is exaggerated. This may end up lowering their self-esteem and feeling less adequate as compared to their friends. Among adults, social media has led to numerous break-ups of relationships. Social media use also physically isolates individuals from their family and friends thus affecting their psychological well-being. This effect is known as the reduction hypothesis (Valkenburg & Peter, 2009a). This thus creates loneliness, depression and smaller social circle attachments. Conclusion The wide application of social media among teenagers and high school students has resulted to wide range of issues that need to be looked-into. Good leadership and leaders in this sector need to be put in place in order to guide its use. This will enable the full realization of its benefits and reduction in the negative effects of social media. Students need to realize that the availability of other forms of recreation and leisure spending ways and other media forms that they can spend their time on. This reduces high spending of time in social networking. The use of Edmodo and Bitstrips in schools should be encouraged due to its fathomless advantages to learning. Despite social media having many benefits to teenagers and in learning process, it has psychological negative effects to the students and teenagers. Psychological effects of social media are painful to the victims and measures should be put in place to overcome them. Generally, social media has drastically changed the lifestyles of students and since its use cannot be discouraged due to its positive impacts, there is need of coming up with good policies on its use, instructors’ roles and good guidance to students and teenagers. The social media and other technological teaching modes need to be encouraged in schools. References Bitstripsforschools. (2009). Retrieved 20th November from Read More