We live in a modern era, teenagers nowadays are all connected via the internet, our friends, cousins can share their thoughts and pics and we can engage with them. We can laugh and share the joy! How interesting and good it is?
Well, its simply complicated. To give a glimpse, according to Pew think tank, teenagers spend 9 hours on their phone screens, out of which most of the time they spend is on social media. when they do so, they miss out creating critical social skills in real life. They miss out facial expressions and real-time talks and when they talk formally in real life, they struggle to formulate a quick response.
Diving further, teens can actually show symptoms similar to drug withdrawal when removed from their social media connections.
15 percent of teens were disturbed and uncomfortable about having had their private message forwarded or posted in a public forum and nearly 39 percent of teens on the social network have been cyberbullied in some way.
Not only cyberbullying, but online depression is also something distorting our youth. Most of the teenagers are on social media and loves to share their pictures and moments on social media. But many studies found that someone who pretends to be very happy on social media can be the same who is depressed in real life. A Teenager after seeing random pictures of his friends going out for vacations, who may be unable to go due to family or other issues may feel dismal. He may start cursing his life. Also when he sees his mates hanging out with friends and dear ones, he may feel left out. It is a very moment when he feels that -no one loves him or care for him. While he will continue scrolling his feed, he may find his long lost friend winning a random competition, which can affect his mindset and a feeling of worthlessness can crash his mind which is completely wrong as a person only post their success on such platforms. That same friend may have lost 1000 times, but as said, he won’t post failures on social media.
How exactly social media is creating a mess?
We live in a modern era, teenagers nowadays are all connected via the internet, our friends, cousins can share their thoughts and pictures and we can engage with them. We can laugh and share the joy! How interesting and good it is?
Well, it’s simply complicated.
To give a glimpse, according to Pew think tank, teenagers miss out on facial expressions and real-time talks and when they talk formally in real life, they struggle to formulate a quick response. Diving further, teens can actually show symptoms similar to drug withdrawal when removed from their social media connections.
Cyberbullying is also something that must be addressed. Here are two kinds of people are likely to be cyberbullied, the popular ones and those on the fringes of society; the former resort to such activities to stay popular or to feel powerful, while the latter troll to fit into a society or to get back at a society that excludes them. This concludes that social networking sites are becoming something where kids who feel insecure in real life, open their laptops, and vomit their insecurity in the form of trolls. This is a symptom of silent depression.
Secondly, teenagers can not be completely blamed. It is not possible for one not to know about such social networking sites when he/she lives in an urban city. Social media is made such to attract and engage youth with itself for a long time. A feature like unnecessary notifications and infinite scrolling is what makes social media addictive. Just like slot machines have trigger to pull, apps like Instagram have refresh feature which makes it addictive as gambling teens not feel like they are spending their precious time just like money by refreshing unnecessary.
Also, social networking sites cannot be simply rejected. If used correctly, social media helps to pull teenagers out of isolation. There are numerous communities over such social media platforms that offer healthy and productive conversations. For someone interested in EDM music can find people having similar interests on these websites easily. This can significantly help him to deepen and widen his/her interest. Using social media is not good or bad, but how do we use it, makes the difference.
At last, it won’t take a genius to recognise that social media had impacted us to great extent. Even if someone does not use social media, a person sitting next to him does. As said by Tristan Harris, we have to make sure that we do not fall and get sucked into some bottomless vortex of stuff.