The Impact of Social Media on Teenagers
In our society, we look at social media as a way to blow off steam, chat with friends, or maybe even get the news, but we need to start looking at the bigger picture: the negative impact it can have on teens.
Most of the time, it can be a harmless distraction, but the problem is that we aren’t digging deep enough into how exactly it is able to impact them in a harmful way. I know what you might be thinking, there is no way that social media usage could be that harmful to a teenager. But if that is what you are thinking, I would have to disagree with you.
For starters, teens don’t think anything bad can happen to them. To teenagers, when parents tell them something it’s usually shrugged off to the parents being “overprotective” or “paranoid” because teens don’t think anything bad could happen on the internet. I was that age once, I remember very clearly thinking about how I was invincible to anything bad that could happen, and that made me fearless. Fearlessness is the worst thing that a teen could have when it comes to social media because it can spiral off into so many different problems. For example, most teens don’t take the time to read or understand the privacy agreements that social media accounts have made and they don’t realize the risks if they do provide certain aspects of their personal information. If they aren’t careful with what they put out there, it could put them at risk of identity theft or being cyber-stalked. According to an article on Techno Crazed, 20% of teens think that there is nothing wrong with posting personal information or pictures on social media accounts. Thankfully, teens are becoming more aware than before, but this is still too high of a percentage when it comes to something as serious as those two things.
Not convinced that it’s harmful yet? An author on The Guardian stated that there was a recent study that showed that teens using social media (especially at night) are damaging their sleep patterns and ultimately putting them at a higher risk of anxiety and depression. The lack of sleep that they are getting puts them at such a higher risk because teens usually need more sleep than adults do since they are at such an important age in development. When you throw something in the mix that makes them feel so attached as social media does, it changes the way they live their lives and ultimately that is putting a negative impact on their mental health. Teens are so “plugged in” to social media sites that they are practically chained to them 24/7 and that puts pressure on them that no one can understand because we have such a relaxed view of what social media is all about.
Don’t worry, I know that it’s not all bad. While social media can harm teens in the worst ways, it can also impact them in a positive way. Teens can be tough to their peers on social media, but they can also lift their self-esteem. It is well-known that they like to post a lot of pictures on social media (girls especially) and when that happens, more often than not the comments are uplifting. CNN stated that, “according to a report last year by the nonprofit child advocacy group Common Sense Media, one in five teens said social media makes them feel more confident, compared with 4% who said it makes them feel less so.” Not only that, but WPR said that it is shown that if teens have these social media websites that they are more likely to feel empowered and create their own social identity through them.
Even so, do these positives outweigh the negatives? Personally, I would say that we need to rethink that culture of social media with teenagers so that we can prevent more mental health issues, cyberbullying or any other harmful issue that it causes them. There are other ways that teens can boost self-image and create their identity that don’t cause them to struggle with peer pressure or anxiety like social media does.
http://www.technocrazed.com/top-10-negative-effects-of-social-media-on-children-and-teenagers
http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/21/living/social-media-positives-teens-parents/
http://www.livescience.com/52148-social-media-teen-sleep-anxiety.html
http://www.wpr.org/social-media-both-positive-negative-youth
