Personal Interaction Takes a Back Seat to Technology

According to CNN, teens spend nine hours a day consuming media. But is that a good thing? Youth can be mocked from posts on social media. Youth is more into their media “life” than real life. One doesn’t even make real friends online. Overall, social media has a negative impact on youth.

Kardaras, Nicolas. "Generation Z: Online and at Risk?." Scientific American Mind, vol. 27, no. 5, Sep/Oct 2016, pp. 64-9. MasterFILE Premier. Kardars discuss generation z use of social media affecting them negatively. He opens his article with a story of Heidi who becomes addicted to social media when her school issues her a Chromebook. Before Heidi is issued the laptop, she was a sweet innocent girl and after having it for a semester she became someone her parents could not recognize. He states that social media is a “perfect storm” for humans because having a social connection key to “happiness and health”. Having the ability to always use social media leads to hyper texting the illusion of a real connection making it hard for teens to have face to face conversations, making a teens become “glow kid[s]“, someone who is raised on mostly digital social interactions. Facebook depression” can result in the teen to have lower grades and behavior problems in teens. He concludes his article with facts proving that Facebook can become addictive in some people. This source helps support my thesis that Facebook affects teens mental health.

Social media has captivated young and adult equally, but young kids are more vulnerable to the negative effects of social media. In the essay writing by Peggy Orenstein, she is troubled by the way young boys and girls are submerged in the cyberspace. She found that places like Facebook or twitter can affect the developing personality of young kids. These kids are more likely to suffer from bulling, to engage in a sexual relationship sooner and with an older person, be the victims of sexual assaults and be self-center. Without being aware of the power of social media, I started using social media since 1996; while I was going to college in the Dominican Republic. I used to go to the computer center during my free time and signed into a

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.

Electronic communication plays vast roles in the way individuals communicate in today’s society, this has created a significant change to the quality of interpersonal

Melissa Healy, a reporter of the Los Angeles Times, in the article Teenage Social Media Butterflies May Not Be Such A Bad Idea, claims that kids who spend lots of time on social media are not the least well-adjusted, but psychologically healthiest. Healy supports her argument by demonstrating how social media is beneficial to a teen’s health. According to a three-year Digital Youth Project, when teengars use social media, it helps them develop important social skills such as communication, grappling with social norms, and developing technical skills. Psychology professor Kaveri Subrahmanyam describes that teens behave the same between offline relationships and online ones, so most teens will use the internet safely. The author’s purpose is

Social media has been known to help students develop important knowledge and social skills. “At first glance this may seem like a waste of time; however it also helps students to develop important knowledge and social skills, and be active citizens who create and share content.” (Chen 3). The more time teens spend on social media the more they become aware of their own social side and how to interact with others, especially their peers. “Some types of social media has beneficial effects, like helping adolescents establish some sense of identity and build networking skills” (Riley Davis). Too much time being spent on social media can also exploit teens to some harsh realities that they’ve probably never experienced in their lives before.

In today’s world of massive interconnectivity, it is often seen that people lose the “physical connection” aspect of necessary interactions. Humans are social creatures, thus restricting ourselves to communicating through Facebook, Instagram, or whatever medium is convenient at the time becomes detrimental the health and well-being we try to cultivate and maintain. In other words, with the many successes and necessities that interconnectivity has provided humanity, there are just as many pitfalls and problems.

Technology has had so many advances in the past decade. People are constantly using the internet for numerous things. Every person uses the internet and technology at least once in their lifetime. Since technology is constantly growing and advancing people find themselves using it more and more for everyday life. Now, adults are usually the ones using the internet, but young kids have found themselves using it more frequently as well. Whether it be a child who is using a phone for games, or a teenager who is using a phone for social media, the internet is always being used. Young kids also find themselves using the internet for several things including social media or texting. With young people using social media there can be a positive side, a negative side, and even changes in ones mind. Young people feed into social media and with this comes cyberbullying, insecurities, distraction, and no privacy.

There is a transformation happening today that is completely changing the way that we do things. The ways that we are communicating are shifting from face to face interactions to short, interactive messages. Technology seems to be making it easier to stay connected, but it is restricting our interactions with others and leading to isolation.

ii. However, for many of us, face-to-face communication seems to be a dying art – replaced by text messaging, e-mails, and social media. Human communication and interactions are shaped by available technologies

Studies have shown that the average person now spends more time each day on their phone and computer than they do sleeping according to Nick McGillivray (“What are the Effects of Social Media on Youth?). Social has become part of our social society, especially for the many youths. There are positives to being on social media and also equal amounts of danger that come with using social networking sites, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. These social networking sites also have effects on today’s youth by altering the way they behave, the way they learn, in not only a classroom setting but also in the real world setting, and the way that they socialize with their peers and others.

Technology has been advancing year after year providing the people with opportunities to grow. We use technology every single day. Many use it to conversate and interact with family or people all around the world. In an article titled Life in the Fourth Millennium by Steven Pinker he states that “Humans are social species with intense longings for friends, communities, family and spouses, consummated by face-to-face contact.” (Pinker 13th paragraph). Face-to-face contact is what humans were presented with until the 2000’s. This day in age it is too expensive to travel across country or to another country just to be consummated by face-to-face contact. With these advancements we are able to communicate face-to-face via Skype,

From having good grades, to studying for the ACT, in addition to trying to fit into the social aspect in high school a teens life has never been more hard. And the invention of the smartphone has only added to the amount of stress that a teen has to deal with. The smartphone has created an environment in which adolescents are always connected with those they go to highschool with, through the use of social media. For example if a bully were to be picking on a student at school the student could not just go home and forget about the incident, but now the bully has the ability to abuse that student at any point he/she desires. These types of incidents are creating a new wave of problems for adolescents and their parents, Nojiri Matthew interviewed Rick Wolf (assistant superintendent at Mifflin School district) explaining “The increase in social media use has added another element when identifying and caring for kids dealing with anxiety, depression, eating disorders, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and other mental health disorders, Wolf said” (Wolf). The smartphone is the catalyst to these problems. If you were to take away the smartphone problems such as cyberbullying would be less of an issue. However adolescents these days are given smartphones at such a young age, with no supervision on how long they use it throughout the day, that it becomes second nature to be looking at it every minute of everyday checking their social media profiles.

Can you imagine living in a world with no social media or smartphone? No instagram, twitter, facebook or snapchat? Believe it or not, that world existed before us millennials did. According to an article found on the Pew Research Center.com, entitled “The Demographics of Social Media Users”, the amount of Facebook users is “72% of adult internet users [and] 62% of entire adult population.” Facebook along with other media outlets have easily become the norm for young adults and older adults in today’s society. The rapid growth of accessibility to social media networking was made possible from the creation and use of smart phones. The combination of social media sites and smart phone users has single handedly eliminated the need for human interactions, but also has provided a repertoire of information at our fingertips. I will discuss the following: the history of Facebook and its impact, the creation of the iPhone and its development of social media apps like Instagram, and the effects of cyberbullying. The purpose of this essay is to explore the productive qualities and destructive qualities that various social media outlets have presented to our generation.