How Youth Online Culture Is Perceived

With social media growing and growing into a mass of accounts and profiles and different groups of people and clubs and websites and other things, what adolescents do on social media is something that many parents worry about. Not every parent is at ease with the fact that their child/teenager is out in open water; one young human being surrounded by millions of other human beings who are younger, the same age, or older than them. The article “Teenage social media butterflies may not be such a bad idea” takes a look at teenagers ' use of social media. Social media is a very important tool, allowing people to connect or continue their relationships without

The article, “What Adolescents Miss When We Let Them Grow up in Cyberspace,” written by Brent Staples discusses negative influences that internet has toward teens. The author elaborates that teens are far more comfortable with online conversations. Social Media has high expectations to how a teen should act or look. Media emotionally scars teens, demanding them to have clear skin and skinny body. The more people that are connected to their phones, higher the chance of losing relationships. The internet has left many teens with unreal social skills. Real life experiences such as law, teens are not knowledgeable. Teenagers miss out on life experiences that can help them grow into adulthood.

Older generations don’t realize how much technology has affected this generation of teenagers, along with the social media that comes along with the technology. As stated in “How Social Media Changed Teens’ Lives Forever”; “Negative posts or comments also can do great damage to a teen’s self-esteem.” (Ashley Black, Thomas Atseff and Colleen Kaveney) While many parents think social media is just a way to connect with others, many teenagers take it for granted. For example, “quitting social media because it made her miserable and obsessed with appearing perfect online”, is what a teenager felt about social media and what it has done to her. Though many think that social media is a great way to connect, teenagers take it to another level.

It is not uncommon for someone to exaggerate the truth or to leave out facts about themselves on the web. In fact, you may even find that the person you thought you knew on the internet is nothing like their profiles in real life. Whether it is to stand out in the crowd or to fool someone into thinking you are someone else entirely, you should not believe everything you see or read online. With photo enhancements, little white lies, and the scam termed catfishing, you just never really know who you are talking to or what their intentions are. Michele Fleming and Debra Rickwood, authors of “Teens in Cyberspace”, determine that parents and the public share the concern of teens encountering predators and pedophiles on the internet and could lead to inappropriate relationships on and off the web. The young generation typically communicates with peers and people close in age, however, Fleming and Rickwood advise “Even though many teens appear Net-savvy, they still need to be reminded of the potential dangers lurking online. There may be many friends in cyberspace but there are undoubtedly a number of

Parents watch their children before they get themselves in trouble. On the other hand, children don’t deserve to be watched and questioned after every interaction on the internet. The uses of the internet for teens involve following celebrities or people they look up to. They mostly follow people they know. If not, they follow people who have the same interests as them.

Parents complain that teens are always on their phones and never out in the real world, but maybe if they weren’t “locked indoors, unable to get on their bicycles and hang out with their friends,” they could have the chance to mirror what they’re learning online, outside in the “real world” (Boyd). As Boyd puts it, “Social media and smartphone apps have become so popular in recent years because teens need a place to call their own. They want the freedom to explore their identity and the world around them.” If anything, being on social media is a safer way to make mistakes and learn from them before having to face harsher repercussions for them outside of the digital

Teenagers encounter many obstacles before the end of their adolescent years. They experience hardships that include oppression, dealing with high expectations, and lack of motivation. In today’s modern world teens are facing these hardships and putting their problems online. The internet and social media are key factors to helping teens cope and express their worries to others. Teens of the modern world deal with their difficulties much differently than teens of decades before them. The older generation of teenagers were forced to confront their issues without the option of escaping online. The teens avoided their problems by physically escaping their oppressive situations and thus began their journey of understanding.

Turkle discusses the online personalities adolescents form to gain more confidence in who they are. These personalities’ form a constant need to stay connected and these teens have developed the willingness to put themselves in danger to do so. The new generation of adolescents feel a pull to be at a beckons call to every notification delivered to their cellular device. She argues these teens have been raised in a different manner compared to those of whom were teenagers twenty years ago. All of these factors lead into a war between technology and society of which hinders our young people’s development. Adolescents are bound to the constant desire to have a connection to technology and the luxuries the technology

She writes, “They’re connected, they’re collaborative, they’re used to writing about themselves,” referring to the new culture created by teen internet users (Goldwasser 1). Goldwasser continues to argue teens to have an exponentially wider grasp on the world. She cites their ability to watch famous speeches, read award winning novels, share their opinions, and share their own stories as proof of the usefulness of the internet. Nevertheless, fear of the online world persists. Teenagers now have access

Ever since the internet became popular, there has been an ongoing debate on whether the internet is helpful or harmful to adolescents. Those who oppose the use of the internet claim that it damages teenagers’ “real world” social skills and distracts them from other important parts of their lives(ex. school, family, job, etc.). This group believes that teenagers need to distance themselves from technology before it “damages” them by means of cyber bullying, obsession, and/or photographs that promote hazardous behavior. The other side, however, sees the internet as a tool that can be both helpful and harmful.This viewpoint is illustrated in Thomas A. Workman’s essay “The Real Impact of Virtual Worlds”. In his essay, Workman breaks his argument down into five “digital norms” that describe teenager’s attitude

There once was a time when the Internet was used as a simple source of messaging and increasing one’s intellect on subjects. Today however there are so many cases of teenagers being

Internet safety has been an extensive issue for children and adolescents since accuse to the Internet has become readily available in homes. With Internet use increasing at such rapid rates and a large proportion of adolescents using the Internet daily, the awareness of Internet safety should be addressed. The term Internet safety can be defined as “the knowledge of maximizing an individuals safety to private information, and self protection from using the Internet”. The impact and influence that the Internet has on adolescent life is far-reaching and research findings by Norris (2007) indicate that one-quarter of the American youth that go online at home, do so in the privacy of their rooms. Additionally, with the recent trend of wireless connections there has been a profound expansion in private Internet usage. The diverse means by which adolescents are using the Internet has become coupled with inherent risks of unsupervised and uneducated use.

“American children between eight and twelve say they spend an average of six hours a day using digital media, and those between thirteen and eighteen say they spend nine hours a day,” Goldsborough mentions (62). It is apparent that children and teenagers spend an abundant amount of their time on digital media. However, due to the fact that adolescents are spending an excessive amount of time on social media, more and more people are beginning to change their identity. The internet user may get so caught up in the virtual world, that they begin to lose sight of who they are in the real world. Thus causing a myriad of problems. Cyr acknowledges this fact by claiming that technology is causing people to change their identity. Another issue social

Social media has become a prominent part of life for many young people today. Most people engage with social media without stopping to think of its influence on our lives, whether positive or negative. What will the long term effects of today's social media use be for our youth? Social media has revolutionised how most of us communicate, especially regarding young people, even in the most remote Indigenous communities in Australia youth culture is being reshaped through digital technologies. Young people are provided with a range of positive opportunities to maintain social connections and support via online social networks as well as learning and participating with a multitude of interests. Along with these opportunities there are also risks associated with social media such as social isolation or loss of privacy as well as cyberbullying and self-esteem pressures. We need to develop the opportunities offered by digital and social media to promote learning and wellbeing for our youth that is inclusive of young people’s input and ideas.

Today’s youth generation, has a strong attachment to the online world. Many adolescents spend most of their time online versus offline. Therefore, one can consider these adolescents as a social network addict, a person who spends a fair amount of time on one or many social platforms. Throughout the three articles, “Social Networking Addiction: An Overview of Preliminary Findings” by Mark Griffiths, “Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship” by Nicole B. Ellison and “Taking Risky Opportunities in Youthful Content Creation: Teenagers’ use of Social Networking Sites for Intimacy, Privacy, and Self-expression” by Sonia Livingstone, show how this addiction has changed people’s communication among people. While there are