Social Media And How It Affects Teenagers Social Research (Essay Sample)

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4/10/17
Social Media and How It Affects Teenagers
A site in the internet that allows interaction of any sort is the simplest definition of what Social Media is. In the recent era, many of such sites and web pages have come to existence and are currently spreading like a forest’s wild fire. They are the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Imo, Whatsapp, 2go, LinkedIn, Google Plus among many others. Social Media has brought with it a lot of goodness and at the same time it has been a source of constant pain and source of frustration to millions of users, especially the teenagers. (Ahn, J. (2011)).
The twenty first century parents has loads of burdens to deal with in regard to managing their children and instilling discipline in them. Exposure to technology has made many teenagers and it has also destroyed many destinies. This research will show us how much of a monster Social Media has become both to the teens and the parents.
According to the research that was conducted at the University Of Maryland, the teenagers become restless, depressed, anxious and traumatized whenever they are away from Social Media. This was done by the researchers taking their smart phones and iPhones away from them for twenty four hours, they were then allowed to have their phones back and told to share their experiences on the class blog. Most of them almost three quarters of the entire population gave feedbacks of being traumatized and never wished to have such an experience again.
This is what social media has turned teenagers to. Addicts! Teenagers are now addicts of being on phone texting, posting pictures, sharing irrelevant posts that are not bound to help develop their intellectual capacity. This is the reason for the continuous rise of robots with flesh and blood (teenagers who have to be told most things) because they have little to no time of personal reflection, meditation and self-assessment. This makes them unproductive and less impactful and innovative. (Madden, M., Lenhart, A., Cortesi, S., Gasser, U., Duggan, M., Smith, A., & Beaton, M. (2013)).
Risks of using Social Media
About seventy percent of those using social media are adolescents/teenagers/youth. This makes social media a more risky bet for most people who use social media in one way or another. These risks fall into various categories such as the youth having problems with their fellows, having problems with the management of these social media platforms due to misunderstanding their policies especially the privacy policies, third party interferences.
Some of these risks are; Cyber Bullying. This is where a particular person or a group of people are harassed by bullies who they met online or those friends they know but they suffer in silence over one or two things these friends posted or said to them and people commented harshly. This is also online harassment. The term online harassment and cyber bullying are used to refer to the other yet they don’t necessarily mean the same thing. The online harassment is not common like the physical harassment. (Barker, V. (2009)). This means that most teens with social media accounts might not be harassed by their peers but on the other hand they may be bullied through the derogatory statements and comments made by their peers. Cyber bullying often leads to chronic psychological problems such as depression and anxiety and this could graduate to more serious health issues if not handled in time and has led to many cases of suicide. (Barker, V. (2009)).
Immorality has also sky rocketed as a function of teenagers on social media. Many pornographic companies have opened sites that have become interaction points for those looking for quick sex and also those who don’t mind selling their bodies. There are many sites that give platforms for teens to meet sugar mummies and sugar daddies. Take for example, Instagram, there are very many pages that have on them pictures and videos of fully naked or half naked women twerking and to make this a wonder, this kind of accounts have millions of followers. This shows in black and white how the teens in this society are corrupted and evil minded. Applications such as Whatsapp and messenger have made it easy for teens to flirt and sext. Sexting is where there are two or more people sharing images and videos of their own private parts via devices such as cell phones, laptops , tablets or ipads. Before the introduction of applications such as the Whatsapp and Viber and even Facebook, this was a very rare occurrence, but now, it is easy to send such multimedia messages at a very affordable rate. This encourages promiscuity and prostitution is growing at an alarming rate! Teenage prostitutes now use this to charge people money in order to send them naked pictures some who are old enough to be their grandparents. Apart from the immoral concept of sexting, it leads many teens to depression and stress especially when they get mocked about the size of their private parts.
Another sickening bit of social media on teenagers is the part of distorted communication/barrier to clear communication, especially written communication. Social Media has made most youth to be lazy in typing whole words and use short forms of such words to make their points, example; “abty” instead of “ability” This adversely affects them in school and most teens are unable to pass certain examination because of their spelling errors. To add onto this, they are also unable to communicate directly as most of the time they text whatever they need from the other party. The tone used in the text message may not be the one that the person actually would have used in the real face to face talk. This misrepresents them and makes them so vulnerable to misjudgment and unnecessary criticism. Before the arrival of the numerous social media platforms, the teens used to interact in a more exclusive and adorable manner. They used to bond together, share great ideas, reason things out, have more time with family, spend more time with their spouses without being distracted. But now, even romantic dates have no romance in them, couples would go out to a very classy and sassy hotel, order food and begin to take pictures of the food, their shoes and jewellery and begin to post them on Facebook and Instagram. They have no time to actually bond and feel each other’s heart beat which is the reason that date is scheduled for in the first place!
At the University of Maryland, the teens were actually a reflection of all the teens in the world and how they feel about Social Media. The same way the two hundred students were crazy about the experience of not being given access to their devices for twenty four hours, it’s the same way millions of other teens in the world would feel about not having their devices such as phones and ipads for that same amount of time, in fact, some would have had a heart attack before the twenty fourth hour.
This addiction and sudden crave and appetite for Facebook, Instagram, among others have lowered the concentration span of most teenagers. At the University, one will not be shocked to see a group of students chatting on Skype or Viber about how Donald Trump is the most horrible president America has ever had yet exam is just a dawn away. One will not be shocked to see a medicine student chatting on Imo while lectures on how to operate a human brain is on. This means that social media is a suicide mission that harbors lots of accidents in waiting; a suicide mission with a time bomb in plain sight. This is what social Media has done to this generation.
Many students who used to do well in high school suddenly begin to perform poorly when they join the University because their time is sucked by events that take place around the Social Media world. Most of their concentration is diverted to useless chats that go on on Facebook chat rooms rather than concentrating on Economics that they went to study at the University. This diverted concentration is the reason for the rising level of exam cheating because they are unable to recall what the tutor or professor said in class, probably a concept that was repeated five times and he or she missed it because S/he was stuck in an Instagram page with naked women twerking their tails feathers dry.
Conmen and Con women have finally got an office to milk all kinds of cash be it dollars, Yen, shilling or Naira. They open pseudo accounts, impersonating various prominent people like pastors or inspirational speakers or celebrities and they manipulate their ways to unsuspecting social media users’ pockets. Many teenagers have fallen victims of this kind of dirty hustle and have even been duped of their school fees. Many others have been involved in making this pseudo accounts and using them to dupe/con many people. This has landed most of the teens in prison and some have been killed by angry victims who got wise and tracked them.
In addition to all this, many people are being stalked and monitored via what they post on social media. (Madden, M., Lenhart, A., Cortesi, S., Gasser, U., Duggan, M., Smith, A., & Beaton, M. (2013)). Most youth would post what they are doing at the moment, where they are, where they will take lunch tomorrow, who they will travel with next week, how they slept last night among many other details. This gives an opportunity for thugs/robbers to know virtually everything about their target, making it easy for them to strike and get away with valuable items. This kind of monitoring and stalking is made so easy by the teens who seek to please others and to have all they have and pretend have all over the internet. This denies them their privacy.
Being ignored by the people teens post their pictures to causes them to feel unwanted and rejected. A teenager can take a very nice picture of him/her and posts it on F...