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The Effects of Social Media on Teenagers

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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 plays a complex role in children’s differentiation from parents. On the one hand, social media make it very easy for adolescents to stay in minute-by-minute touch with their peers. Yet, those same social media make it easy for adolescents to stay in touch with parents (Wood, 1999, p. 313). It’s inarguably one of the fastest ways to reach a large number of people. In 2008, President-elected Obama won the election by using social media to get his political message across and reach voters. During the campaign election, the “Obama campaign had made 5 million "friends" on more than 15 social networking sites (3 million friends on Facebook itself)” (Tay, 2010, Positive effects of social media section, para. 2). Another

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