Impact of Social Media on the Youth

Hunter Smith
More than Donuts
Published in
2 min readFeb 21, 2017

What is social media? And what impact does it have on today’s youth? Social media is defined as websites and application that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking. Interactions through social media are an everyday thing used today and has great influence on everyone who uses it. One class that is influenced greatly is the youth. Since they are common users of social media and are growing up in a social based world, the impression is both positive and negative.

Although social media has dual affects, both have similar lasting powers. On the positive side, social media and networking can connect with students in educational systems, create new friends and connect people with friends/family. Also, it can create career paths to career networking and keep people up to date with civilization or popular events. On the other side, negative influences can be involved with today’s youth. One of the major downsides is cyber bullying. Cyber bullying is extremely common and can affect anyone but is especially challenging with younger people. Another bad side social media creates with the youth is it takes away from personal interactions, meaning that people do not intermingle like the good ole days. Some people grow up lacking the common knowledge of people skills and it is based around this.

It is clear, that social media is part of not only today’s youth but everyone in society. Social media can assist younger people to grow up and become successful but can also lead them to becoming ineffectual and immature. Since social media can have both positive and negative impacts on today’s youth, then there must be a cautioned balance between using it too much or exercising it not enough. We must make sure the impact is in the end, beneficial.

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