Within the modern day world, technology has taken grasp of humanity, especially the younger generations that are being conformed through advancements. Due to the skyrocketing increase in technological advancements, young brilliant minds all over the world are utilising social media technologies especially in their everyday lives. This ongoing change has proved to provide both positive and negative outcomes in teenagers. Globally, social media technology has created an outlet that one can plug into from anywhere on this vast planet. In the fast accelerating world of technology, devices surround the youth’ culture every day in which they remain plugged in and interconnected with others outside of their reach from all over the globe.
Social media technologies have been seen as a tool to get through to the minds of teenagers, allowing them to remain aware and coherent to the world around them. Although problems remain due to the use of these technologies among teenagers, positive attributes still remain. Through the use of smartphones, websites, devices, and computers…this opens the door to the promotion of healthy behavior among teenagers. Thousands upon thousands of apps such as superfoods, weightbot, and Nutrino promote healthy lifestyles and influences teenagers to stay on track with their exercise, weight, and diet. The Center of Innovative Public Health Research created a text program for teenagers to inform and raise awareness of the negative long term effects of smoking and how to stop and initiate others to quit as well. This text program was an easy and efficient way to directly contact and keep teenagers informed about the risks and concerns of smoking.
Furthermore, Technology also provides not only physical health benefits but also mental health benefits. Social media technologies provide helpful outlets to teenagers to express themselves to the fullest and to reach out to others around the world that have the same interests and thoughts similar to themselves. This creates an innovative way for those who feel like “outcasts” to show their true selves without receiving negative judgement. Anonymous blogs and websites allow teenagers to anonymously speak their mind and be themselves without the criticism of the outside realm they might experience from fellow classmates or friends. Websites such as Tumblr, Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter also pave a way for teens to post pictures and videos that are reachable by others around the world. This allows teenagers to find others with the same interests and hobbies which in some cases can create friendships.
Through social media sites like these teens have the direct availability to uniquely portray their true selves. Another positive contributing factor that is a result of these technologies is that it aids teenagers social development and increases their knowledge and awareness to events and issues occurring all over the world in different countries. This allows the younger generations to stay in tune to international affairs and become educated on them to make their own personal judgements and opinions. In fact, 75% of teenagers have profiles on some sort of social media outlet; critical thinking skills can be formed through chat rooms and blogs and teenagers can explore the endless possibilities of their brilliant minds. Political and social awareness are also gained through websites, articles, news broadcasts, and documentaries which further enhances teenagers knowledge of the outside world away from their comforting screen. Social media technology creates the possibility for teenagers to further their presence and interactions with others within real life experiences.
In correlation to the workforce, teenagers are able to learn formal and informal language which heightens their intellectual skills and furthers their success. Popular technologies such as smartphones provide an easy way for teenagers to engage in educational discussions and debates which also aids their literacy skills. Finally, social media technologies provides educational benefits such as smartboard interactions that create more hands on learning experiences, as well as online websites for practicing and learning material. Examples of these would be Quizlet, Google Classroom, MathTutor, and Youtube videos. All of these tools remain in the hands of teenagers, and globally students are able to seek out educational support through innovative technologies. Due to the quick and easy availability of learning tools Pew Research found that 48% of teens parents believe they are writing more today than 40 years ago, as well as 65% of teen bloggers believe it writing is essential for success later on in life.
Overall teenagers are experiencing more educational and intellectual benefits through the use of social media technologies more than ever before, but negative impacts of these technologies remain present within the teenage generation. In today’s world, there is a constant widespread availability of technology surrounding teenagers, ultimately creating an influential way of staying connected with the outside world far from themselves. Although technology has proved to provide beneficial tools in all aspects of the world, negative attributes are highly associated with social media technology and dteenagers. Much of the online frenzy associated with social media has to do with the younger generations having mobile devices at their fingertips. There is a high increase of depression due to cyber bullying, sleep deprivation, negative awareness, and sexting. These all correlate to the immense usage of social media technologies….. This paves the path to the deterioration of conscious emotions.
Due to the increase in smartphone usage by teens Pew Research Center has found that 94% of teens go online daily, and 56% of those teenagers are around the ages of 13 to 17 years old. This excessive amount of social media technology that teens experience all over the world, is in fact causing damage in a multitude of different ways. To begin with, signs of depression within teens have been linked to the online use of social media technologies due to the high amount of exposure and reach social media accomplishes. Cyberbullying consists of trolling, making harsh comments, racism and discrimination in which all of these are manipulated by the bully. Websites such as YouTube, instagram, Facebook and Twitter when in the wrong hands can be used as a tool to carry out trolling or bullying which negatively affects the teenager who’s is being harassed. These accelerating technologies has provided teenagers with a fast medium to enact hateful and aggressive statements causing other teens to become victims of lifeless but yet power hungry screens. Bullies use the internet and social media websites such as twitter, facebook, instagram etc. in order to mask themselves and easily reach their target.
As a result of this, young minds begin to have a lower self esteem, and keep their feelings built up inside which deteriorates their emotional state. The Cyberbullying Research center has found that 20% of the teens considered suicide after being cyberbullied through the internet, while 19% admitted to attempting to commit suicide. The internet has created a weapon for bullies to taunt a victim through electronics which makes it more difficult for the victim to escape the harassment. Sleep deprivation is another factor that results from teenagers use of their devices and social media. Due to the high amount of phone usage implemented by teenagers, during the nighttime they are not reaching their full healthy sleep duration due to the increased amount of using their mobile devices as well as computers that creates a distractant. This leads to the decrease in teenagers nighttime slumber due to the constant online interactions as well as the blue light that is emitted from the mobile devices. In a research study conducted by the University of California, their data showed that whether or not a student was using their computer or phone, social media had a direct connection to one’s decrease in sleep time, also 20 of the student participants in their study described social media as their pre-bed ritual.
Due to the high light frequency electronics emit, once it comes in contact with the receptors in the eye this causes a decrease in the production of bodily melatonin, causing teenagers to not feel as tired as they would be if not using their electronics while in bed. Since there is a high rate of mobile devices in the hands of the younger generations… this is ultimately creating negative damaging effects such as the sleep deprivation and cyberbullying. Both of these factors contribute to the emotional long term damage teens are and will eventually experience.
Negative awareness can also be seen as another negative effect of teenagers high use in social media technologies. This is reached through technology, it can correlate to sexting among teenagers. This causes detrimental effects to those being exposed in which it can cause humiliation and trauma due to a teenagers `being exposed and having their bodies and personal informational reachable to others on the internet from all over the globe. Sexual exchanges through teenagers whether it is pictures, video, or text increases teens vulnerability to their information being exposed and put out onto the internet for others to view and see. In most cases when this occurs it causes teens to fall into depression due to the hate and humiliation they experienced from others on the internet. The national campaign to support teens and unplanned pregnancies found that 20% of teenagers participate in sexting through a multitude of social media websites. From that 17% share those messages with others once receiving them, this in itself creates a trail in which one’s personal information has been shared with others than who they sent it to. 55% of those share the pictures, text, or video to one or more people.
At that rate, teenagers who undergo sexting through these technologies automatically become revealed to those they may not even know. Once the information is distributed among others and the internet more people from then on can like, share, retweet or even screenshot what had been posted. This ongoing chain of events creates an emotional vacuum to the teen who sent the message in the first place…. Which has the potential to cause emotional distress and depression. The negative awareness that results from the act of sexting among the teenage generation overall causes a wide range of long term damage. Finally social media technologies highly used by teenagers increases the risk of loss of privacy on a widescale. Due to the vast amount of pictures and personal information teenagers input out into the internet on multiple sites, this causes lack of privacy and creates a path to one’s digital footprint. If something is posted onto the world wide web that is inappropriate or distasteful, it can create a digital footprint in which posts can be traced back to a person which may determine their future depending on what is found. LexisNexis and lawyers.com found that 1,000 teenagers from all over put too much personal data onto the internet, while 44% of those thought that their information was being used against them which causes fright.
Identity theft can also result from this in which strangers use random teenagers information and pictures to create a false persona…. 20% of teenagers are blind to the concerns and possible risks of disclosing their information on social media websites. A growing danger that can also arise from this is sexual offenders using false accounts to get to know or stalk a victim. These high risks have the possibilities of threatening those blind to false identities on the screen in which this can cause further emotional distress and possible physical dangers . Overall, social media technologies can have the ability to provide innovative positive impacts on teenagers from all over the world, but primarily the increased used of these technologies is creating more dangers and risks within teenagers than good. This is due to the increased availability and abuse of smart technology that is occurring all over the world by millions of teenagers. The access of technology has allowed a couple taps on screen to wildly impact teenagers which has caused detrimental impacts.
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