Is Social Media Really Helping Our Youth Today?

According to a recent poll, 22% of teenagers log on to their favorite social media site more than 10 times a day, and more than half of adolescents log on to a social media site more than once a day. Seventy-five percent of teenagers now own cellphones, and 25% use them for social media, 54% use them for texting, and 24%use them for instant messaging, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. With teens today using so much social media and having the accesses right at their fingertips, how are we not supposed to view this as a negative thing?

The teenage years are a time for most teens to experiment with their identity and find themselves, although social media may help, by teens being able to voice their opinions, express concerns and try out new ideas. Are main concern is with, what drives teens today to use social media and the consequence of excessive use.

 According to a survey done in December of 2008 and February of 2009, adolescents feel that social media use makes them feel important, cool, and fashionable, and how it increases their status and impresses people. With this in mind, the drive for most youth to use social media is to “impress people”, what happens to the youth that can’t meet the demands of what social media portrays? Well, this can lead to cyberbullying, which is very common amongst social media networks today and have very negative effects. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics’, cyberbullying can occur to any young person online, and can cause profound psychosocial outcomes including depression, anxiety, severe isolation, and, tragically, suicide.

My final point on the negative consequences of social media, come from the ideas of an article posted on the Huffington post, written by Cris Rowan (a Pediatric, occupational therapist). Although she comments mainly on “The Impact of Technology on The Developing Child”, she does state how technology has changed the family dynamics and values, the idea of the lack of tactical and “face to Face” contact. This is something that I see every day, whether it be at work, with clients (I work in customer service), or at home amongst our youth.

 

 

 

 As you can see this image demonstrates what I would think for the most part happens in every North American household at supper time. The lack of tactical and engaging in conversation. My parents and I had gotten into a heated debate the other day on this topic. Every Sunday my parents feel that it’s important to have supper as a family, but I questioned this idea. My questioning was how can having supper together, be important if nobody took part in a conversation? My brother being on Facebook, his girlfriend posting something on Twitter, and the rest of us watching a movie. Well their answer was that it’s nice to have the family together. Till this day I still question what’s the point, we are physically their but lack the most important thing engaging in a conversation. I see it extremely negative that youth today will not be able to develop the skills needed to engage in a “face to Face” conversation. What will happen if technology where to stop working one day? How would they be able to express their feelings without being able to hide behind a phone or a screen? I see it this way, not knowing the expression on someone’s face when speaking to them, leaves me wondering what they are truly feeling.