Social Media

credits to:https://www.mymcmedia.org/class/new-social-media-marketing-101/

The fallout from a California teenager’s excessive cellphone and social media usage has been reported. Brooke, now 15, got her very first personal device which is an Iphone as a 12th birthday gift. Shortly after, Brooke said, she became obsessed. “It was always about refreshing my feed and I’d stay up until like 4:30 in the morning,” Brooke said. “It was my heart. I couldn’t put it down… It felt like a part of me.” Parents must be responsible to their child in terms of the usage of social media. Exposure to social media became a part of every teenager’s lives.

In today’s generation, social media is a big part of everyone’s daily lives and an integral part of today’s society which have a great influence on our actions. Mostly young children and teenagers are being affected by the pressures of social media. It contributes a lot on how an individual grow as a person because they only depend on the information given by social media. Social media is vital to teenagers’ and children’s social and creative lives. They use social media to have fun, make and maintain friendships, share interests, explore identities and develop relationships with family. It’s an extension of their offline and face-to-face interactions. It has many benefits but also some risks. It controls the mind of teenager which affect their behaviour and academic performances. In addition to that, social media involves positive and negative effect to teenagers.

We all know that social media has a big contribution to the society, but we must also be aware of its negative side and the most well-known downside of social media is the addiction it creates. Constantly checking the news feed of the different social media sites becomes an addictive habit. Youngsters addicted to social media end up spending hours each day watching videos, photos and other content posted by their friends and accounts that they follow. This addiction disrupts other activities such as school work, sports, studies and other productive routines. They end up wasting a substantial amount of time every day resulting in poor grades in school. Social media platforms have had a negative effect on the brains of youngsters. It infantilizes their brains to a state like a child that gets attracted to bright colors and buzzing noises while having a short attention span. Among other dangers of social networking sites for children include cybercrime and cyberbullying. Bullying is easier on social media platforms in the form of threatening messages or subtle posts with offensive content directed at a person. Younger children can also become targets of stalking by individuals who intend to cause harm. Parents must also be concerned with how social media affects children as it is easy to gain access to explicit or violent content.

While there have been negative outcomes from social media such as cyberbullying, and other online dangers, social media can be used in ways that promote positive and productive ideas in the society.  It let us stay in touch with our friends and family members that are far away from us, through social media we can stay connected and it gives us a better communication. Also, it helps strengthen long distance relationships by communicating through different social media application like facebook. Furthermore, social media helps us to keep updated in what’s going on around us. We can get a lot of information in social media but the negative part there is not all of them are true. Social media helps us feel less lonely or if we’re having a bad day, expressing our emotion by chatting or talking to our friends online can change our mood. Moreover, social media helps to enhance students’ academic performance and increase their knowledge through data and information gathering.  Most parents and some teachers think social media has negative effect only to teenagers thinking it’s just a waste of time. But in cases like having communication with far away relatives, getting reminders or just by expressing yourself can bring a positive effort in your life style.

We have a million of users around the world that uses social media on day to day basis. Our society, educators, even parents and most especially the youth cannot hide from the reality that social media as part of our culture. The future generation are approaching their lives differently as they integrate digital technologies throughout their daily activities. Can we stop this? No, we cannot since the teenagers nowadays are equipped with laptops, tablets, iPads, smartphones and other devices that provides an easier access to social media. There is no doubt in both positive and negative aspects, but users should use their own discretion on the usage of social networking. Yes, it does have a lot of importance and advantages, but it also brings some hazard that we cannot control whether we like it or not. Therefore, as a student, you must balance the usage of social media and studies properly to live a fuller life.