The Negative Impact Of Teenagers And Social Media

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

Similar to other forms of bullying, cyberbullying can cause a victim to loss of focus on activities, school, family and friends,and can even lead to suicide. According to statistics reported by ABC News “nearly 30 percent of students are either bullies or victims of bullying in some way, and 160,000 kids stay home from school every day because of fear of bullying”(Webster). Due to the fear of going to school, teenagers lose focus on activities important to them and can even lose focus on their future, such as college. According to statistics about bullying in general, “Suicide is the third leading cause of death among young people, resulting in about 4,400 deaths per year, according to the CDC. For every suicide among young people, there are at least 100 suicide attempts. Over 14 percent of high school students have considered suicide, and almost 7 percent have attempted it”(Webster). Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem; however, being bullied in any way can lead to the feeling of loneliness and hopelessness and the laws set in place does not help victims hurt feelings go away. Cyberbullying is not a victimless crime and with these statistics multiple laws have been set into place to prevent bullying; however, there are minimal laws to protect victims of

According to Bulent Dilmac, “bullying is defined as aggression with the intention of hurting (Kepenekci & Çınkır, 2003) and is an anti-social form of behavior that produces negative consequences (Taylor, 2006).” “Cyberbullying is defined as the repetitive use of information and communication technologies by an individual or a group in order to hurt other individuals. (Akbaba & Eroǧlu, 2013).” There have been several cases where cyberbullying causes teenagers to take their own life’s (commit suicide). It can cause individuals to suppress negative emotions within them. Lowering their self-esteem and looking at life with a sense of hopelessness. Jessica Laney was a victim of cyberbullying when she was insulted on social media.

Let me guess you probably checked Instagram, Twitter or Snapchat in the last five minutes. Nowadays it seems like all we do is go on social media, considering that it has been on the rise for the last decade. On average a teenager is an electronic device for more than three hours a day. (Curtis, Sweeny). What we do on a day to day basis is determined by how much time we spend on those sites. Since we spend so much time on social media, can it have a negative effect on teenagers? Is social media dangerous or are there benefits to it? Just how social media is on the rise so are these questions, which have researchers wondering on the effects of social media as teens continue to let it control the way they spending their time. (Goff).

Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are commonly used among the younger generations, but can the excessive use of these apps cause mayhem? According to a new study conducted by the Family Technology Education Non-Profit Group, teenagers are spending nearly 9 hours a day on social media. The excessive use of social media is a bad influence on adolescents because of the negative impacts it has. Social media can cause direct impacts to the mental health, safety, and lives of its users. Teenagers need to ensure that they are being cautious and responsible while using different social media networks.

A large sum of suicides are indirectly or directly influenced by experiences with online aggression. Suicide is not an uncommon result of tormenting through social media. “The psychological impact [of cyberbullying] can be devastating, and suicide is not unknown among young victims. For some victims, the damage to their sense of dignity and emotional well-being could persist for years." (“Jessica Mendoza”) The effects of online bullying are extremely harmful to children. Any child that is having suicidal thoughts from online bullying is a deeply harmed child. Suicide in teens is not uncommon either. Jennifer Holladay states, “Our study of upwards of 2,000 middle school students revealed that cyberbullying victims were nearly twice as likely to attempt suicide compared to students not targeted with online abuse.” Online abuse it a growing problem with the modernizing society. More and more people at younger and younger ages have more access online, and to social media. This increases the online abuse, and will lead to more and more suicides in teens

Social media is the way teens network. It includes applications such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram where individuals can connect, share photographs, and like others posts or images. These applications can be accessed through electronic devices such as iPads, phones, computers, etc. It is known to educate, engage, and impact individuals and their environment. The most well-known theory is that an individual can control what he/she sees, considers, or feels about a topic. To some degree this is valid. Nevertheless, does teenagers know that social media influence them in some way? Social networking is harming to a teens growth as it boosts their online identities, separates them from the universe of social connection, occupies their attention from television, and it also affects relationships. The 21st century has seen the internet change into a device that has made communication less severe and handier. This change occurred rapidly with thoughts of social networks that would allow the association of individuals in various nations. Teenagers, being the principle players of the online networks, has been caught *up in the blend of social networking as they have developed into a period where innovation has reformed the way individuals approach their day by day routines. However, because of the extreme measure of time spent on these sites, they are left to result in pessimistic consequences for their advancement.

Checking the news, keeping up with friends, and sharing quips of witty posts of a hundred and forty characters or less are the normal things for anybody to do while using a social media network. With ages ranging from the very young to the old, therein lies an assimilation of individuals whose information, location, and almost anything else are within their profile, just far enough away to keep the average stalker at bay, but close enough for a person with immoral intents to reach out and simply snatch. As the article, “Social Networking” observes, “…as Internet socializing grows, so do fears that the practice exposes the vulnerable – especially young people – to sexual predators” (627). Sexual predators are not the only people prowling around the Internet, for the range of criminals run the gamut, from potential murderers to vicious kidnappers, with their greatest weapon being something nearly everyone has access to in this modern era. Thus, through social media platforms, alone, these websites contain the information of millions upon millions of unique individuals, where, sometimes, it is as simple as scrolling down to select someone to hack into next. Often enough, these Internet forums are places where even a high school kid can do some damage, but not in the form of using personal information for selfish

In order to understand the importance and consequences of cyberbullying, the main idea of cyberbullying must be expressed. Suzanne Phillips states that “cyberbullying like any form of bullying is relational aggression. It is intended to make the victim feel frightened, humiliated, helpless and too often—hopeless. What makes cyber bullying particularly harmful and in the case of too many young people who have committed suicide, so deadly, is the nature and virulent reach of electronic medium” (Phillips 1). Students are put in danger everyday due to the relevance of cyberbullying that surrounds them. The effects are detrimental to their health and have major impacts on the society. Justin Patchin explains that teens have unhealthy ideas when he states that “cyberbullied youth also report having suicidal thoughts, and there have been a number of examples in the United States and abroad where youth who were victimized ended up taking their own lives” (Patchin 1). Average teenagers express everyday that the effects of cyberbullying are harmful to their well being and self esteem. This causes most teens to feel worthless and makes them believe that their lives are not meaningful. Justin W. Patchin also shows the many outcomes of cyberbullying and displays that at “first, many targets report feeling depressed, sad, angry, and frustrated.

With the widespread presence of teen suicides, parents can 't help but wonder and worry, but they never find out where the child’s depression came of. A review of data collected between 2004 and 2010 via survey studies indicated that “lifetime cyberbullying victimization rates ranged from 20.8% to 40.6% and offending rates ranged from 11.5% to 20.1%” (PubMed Central) There are several specific ways that social media can increase the risk for the suicidal behavior. Cyber bullying and cyber harassment are serious and prevalent problems, as “approximately 2000 middle school children that indicated that victims of cyberbullying were almost two times as likely to attempt suicide than those who were not” (PubMed Central). Although cyberbullying cannot be identified as the only factor for suicide between teenagers, it increases the risk by intensifying feelings of isolation, instability, and hopelessness. According to the recent study, “approximately 43% of the students report experiencing cyberbullying during their lifetime, and 15% of students admitted to cyberbullying others during their lifetime” (Patchin, 2015). There are even more statistics showing how cyber bullies affect teenagers’ emotion and push them to self-destruction. Nowadays, social media has created virtual

Eighty-one percent of minors say that cyberbullying is easier to get away with than regular bullying. Of the kids who are cyberbullied, twenty percent of them think about committing suicide. One in ten go through with it. Suicide is the third leading reason of death in the United States and seventy percent of school students have reported seeing usual cyberbullying. Another nearly seventy percent of teens say that cyberbullying is a big problem and a little over seventy percent of teenagers say they have been to a site where they seen others being harassed. From ages thirteen to seventeen, more than forty percent of teens say they had been cyberbullied in just that past year.

Teens are at more risk today because of social media then in the last 5,000 years of human existence. In the 1990’s the popularity of the internet changed the way people received information. Before social media teens developed their relationships by playing with each other on playgrounds, at the park, or in the neighborhood. With the expansion of social media teens soon became addicted to using various applications and websites. Technology is advancing so quickly that the dangers of social media are unpredictable. The growth of social media for teens is harmful because it is threatening teens well-being.

Various individuals long for a time when technology did not take over the world. For teenagers, it is difficult to imagine a life without the World Wide Web and its countless perks at their fingertips. Social media consumes young lives more than any other form of technological advancement. Social media has a few pros, but also its fair share of cons.

Recent studies have shown a rise in both teen suicides and self-harm among adolescent girls. Suicide among adolescent girls may occur as a result of mental disorders, drug misuse, cultural, family and social situations, genetics, and most of all, cyberbullying (Ehmke). Based on a 2015 study, about 20% of adolescent girls in the U.S. consider suicide and between 5% and 8% of them attempt suicide each year (Ehmke). In 2014 alone, 150 girls out of 10 million, between the ages of ten and fourteen, committed suicide due to cyberbullying among other related factors (Graham). Medical experts warn that excessive social media and smartphone use may lead to cyberbullying. Most victims of cyberbullying often experience a great deal of stress and anxiety leading to suicidal ideation (Ehmke). An analysis by Jean Twenge, in The Atlantic, confirms that cyberbullying is more strongly related to suicidal thoughts in adolescents than traditional bullying (Twenge). Some estimates suggest that - depending on the country of origin - between 5% and 20% of adolescent girls are victims of physical, verbal or exclusion-based bullying, while 15% to 30% of them are victims of cyberbullying (Twenge). The relationship between cyberbullying and suicide has only been explored in a few studies, but Jean Twenge’s analysis strongly suggests that cyberbullying is a major risk factor for suicide ideation in adolescent girls (Twenge).

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.