How does Social Media affect Young People? Words like “Instagram”, “Twitter”, and “Snapchat” are some of the most used words in today’s generation. People are finding it harder and harder to hold a conversation without these terms slipping into their vocabulary, this is because Social Media has become a huge part of everyone life’s. Social media has taken this world by storm, but has seemed to target the minds and emotions of young people in the best and worst ways. The human brain was never designed to stare at a lit phone screen for 2-3 hours a day scrolling and scrolling until a person’s thumb cramps up; social media has caused just that. Adults preach until the sun goes down of how bad social media is for young people, and they might just be right. A study was done by Stuart Wolpert where students age 13-18 were placed in front of a screen and shown their social media posts with hundreds of likes. Wolpert states, “When the teens saw their own photos with a large number of likes, we saw activity across a wide variety of regions in the brain” (Wolpert). This is done multiple times a day within today’s young people, Wolpert goes on to explain that the brain can’t handle this amount of excitement in a span of a few hours, this causes headaches, burning of the eyes and much more. While the physical brain has a hard time handling the activity, the emotional affects caused by constant web surfing are just as harmful. “In 2011, doctors with the American Academy of Pediatrics
In recent years, technology has played an important part in our lives and has influenced us tremendously. One of the ways in which it has impacted our lives is through the use of social media. It seems like social media has become an important part of our lifestyle. We use it everywhere from being in classrooms to being at work. Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat have become a habit for many individuals across many ages. Although, social media is widely used amongst the age group of 18-29. In today’s society, almost everyone is expected to have one of these networking sites either for personal use or work-related use. These sites have extremely influenced our lives in both positive and negative ways.
Social media has been around for a long time and has continued to evolve throughout the years. Facebook is one of the oldest social media platforms and continues to be the “social media behemoth, with nearly two thirds of U.S. adults using this social networking site” (Ruggless 1), even with the creation of newer social media platforms such as, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat. While, Facebook is popular among adults, “83% of people who use Instagram and Snapchat are teens” and “22% of Americans both young and old use Twitter today” (“Social Media’s Shifting Sands 64). As the number of new social media platforms continue to increase the use of these platforms will continue to increase as well.
Social media and social networking sites are undoubtedly a large part of youth’s lives, and growing rapidly throughout generations and cultures. Between the significant number of Facebook users and millions of Instagrammers, it’s reasonable to conclude that these technological advances play a role in shaping my generation and future generation’s lives. Whether it’s decreasing quality time, creating a façade of our lives, or, enticing potential danger-social media gets a bad rap. There is confusion proceeding the implications that social media has in
Social media seems to be changing how we communicate through society. Adolescents are consumed with media for an estimated 7.5-8.5 hours per day (Georgia, 2014; Giedd, 2012). Instead of interacting with each other face to face adolescents are socializing through their phones (George, 2014). The purpose of the paper was to research how social media affects the brain, sleep, and cyberbullying (Lemola, Perkinson- Gloor, Brand, Dewald- Kaufmann, & Grob, 2014; Mills, 2014; Betts & Spenser, 2017).
Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have become a major part of pre-teens and teenagers’ everyday life. With the amount of time, energy, and emotions young people put into social media, it has begun to show some negative effects on the health and well-being of youth. The possible positive effects that social media has is vastly overshadowed by the devastating negative effects it has on our youth.
Occupying the attention in different forms of social media, is a standard pursuit that research has shown to benefit children and adolescents by elevating communication, social connection, and technical ability. Websites such as Facebook and Twitter provide options for communicating with family, friends and people with the same interests. According to Common Sense Media, ¨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.¨ Also, The PewResearch Center says, “92% of teens report going online daily — including 24% who say they go online ‘almost constantly’.” Consequently, a great amount of this ages social and emotional growth happens on social media.
How does social media usage by teenagers and young adults affect academic performance, attitude towards school, and concept of identity?
Recent studies have shown that 23% of teens say that they have been the target of a bully online, and getting bullied can lead up to teen depression. Another 15% said that they were the ones bullying other teens. Most teens sleep with their phones, and most don't go to bed when they’re told to, but some teens do. Because the blue light that comes from the phone is bad for some people's eyes, and most teens are sleep deprived of being on their phones too much at night. Some teens do nothing but go on their phones/social medias, “Kids ages 8 to 12, or teens, are spending about six hours in front of screens.” Yet again a lot of teens are really active and play sports. For those who aren't, most are getting or are obese from not doing anything the whole day, and just being on their phones. Social media can lead up to teen depression, loss of sleep, and it decreases in physical fitness.
People today of all ages are more media centered than ever before in our country’s history. There are more TVs in homes than people (Nielson, 2009), 64% of American adults own smart phones (Center, 2014), 74.4% of U.S. households are connected to the Internet (Ryan, 2014), 87% of adults regularly use internet (Maeve Duggan, 2014), 36 % of teens have a computer in their bedroom 33 % of which have Internet access. Youth spend nearly an hour and a half (outside of schoolwork) with a computer each day (Bank, August 2014), and the average American spends 60 hours a week on multiple media devices (Nielsen, 2014). This constant availability to various forms of media makes it nearly impossible to measure the full affect that TV alone has on American
How the new social media technologies’ impacting on young people in today’s society? The study will examine the positive and negative impact of new media technologies on young people. It will explores on how new media technologies such as computer games, video games, face book, television, twitter, mobile phones, you tube, internet, television, whatsApp, Viber, Snap chat, and other modern technology are playing major role on everyday life in modern society.
Are teens being affected by social media and causing them to have eating disorders? Have you ever looked at something on the media and thought to yourself, I wish I looked like them or I wish I was as perfect as them? Teens are struggling everyday because of the things they see on social media. Teens constantly feel as if they need to compare themselves to the “perfect ones”. Yes, teens are being negatively affected by social media because they want to “fit in”, feel confident and the pressure from the media causes them to come upon some sort of negative affects.
There is no doubt that everyone has a cellphone these days. With these cellphones comes the access to the social media. You can go to a restaurant or store and you will see everyone from a toddler to an elder glued to some kind of technology in front of them. Because this has become so normal to our generation, most are too occupied to the technology to realize how they are being affected by it. Everyone is using it daily, all day, causing it to impact many people, including the youth of today. Social media and technology can have a positive impact on youth, but it can also have a negative impact.
Various forms of media, such as the television, radio, newspapers, movies, magazines and most notably, the internet, have impacted heavily on the youth. The media not only serves as a source of information but also provides a source of entertainment. Media sources have relentlessly worked on creating appealing images that entice the youth to their content. Although these may be informative, the youths have been coerced into consuming more time reading or browsing for such information. Recent advancements in computers and mobile phones have led to ease of access of the internet via advanced wireless devices. Whereas this creates a tech-savvy generation, the content provided by some media houses may be uncensored and entails violent acts,
Some of the top benefits of social media over the years are that it is free to anyone, the content can get out to resources virtually immediately, and it can be delivered to a wide variety of people. For these reasons, communication through social media has become an extremely accessible and convenient way to communicate. It is also popular for those who need to be in contact with others. One example that comes to mind is a teenager who goes away on a trip to visit a friend or family. They can be hundreds of miles away but still talk to their parents as if they weren’t. Another example is a person who is shy and has a hard time making friends face-to-face, social media sites are a great way to meet people and build relationships.
Social media sites allow millions of people to interact with friends,family and anyone around the world. A large portion of social media users are teenagers; researchers and parents both believe that social media is having a multitude of possible effects on teenagers. This literature review will analyze research of the positive and negative effects social media are having on today’s impressionable youth. Much of the research focuses on the age range of 10-16 from well-to-do families and college students. Understanding the online environment that teenagers live in can help parents relate to their children and teach then about the dangers and benefits of being on the Internet.