Impact of Social Media on Youth

 

Social media refers to all applications and websites or blogs that enable people around the globe to interconnect via the internet, chat, and share content, video call among many other functionalities it offers to its users. For a person to be a member of any social media, he or she has to first signup and then sign in to access content and be able to share and chat with other users of that social media platform. Some of the common and widely used social media platforms include Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Snapchat many among others.

Over the past two decades, social media have gained so much growth and fame worldwide to an extent that many researchers are now interested in learning more about these social platforms and their effects on the community. Despite the fact that almost everyone in the community is connected to at least one social media platform, the youth and teenagers are the leading and most fanatic of these social platforms to the point that they even social network while in class or even church. With this in mind, researchers have found that these social dimensions have a significant impact on young people's lives in society, in terms of morality, behavior and even education. Use has both negative and positive effects on today's youth. In this article, I want to shed light on the impact of social media, especially on this generation of young people. These effects can be both positive and negative.

The positive effects of social media on today's youth include keeping up to date with what is happening around the world, networking with fellow youth and friends without a physical meeting to stay, There are things you can connect with. Bridging the friendship gap by allowing Africans to connect and interact with their US friends. This helps, for example, to strengthen relationships between high school and college classmates who moved to different parts of the world after graduating from school. , you can create pages and groups based on other aspects of your life, creating more connections and opening up more opportunities in each area. This could even create more job opportunities for unemployed youth. In many daily interviews, young people say that social media platforms have made their lives more enjoyable, efficient and easy, and have become a way of life.
According to a BBC News report, social media sites seem to connect and inform more people, but they also cause social isolation. Young people typically spend most of their time on these online social platforms, reducing the number of face-to-face interactions between young people. Analyzes of many studies by different scientists show that social isolation can have different effects on these young people, including physical, emotional, mental and psychological problems. It can lead to illness, anxiety, and many other problems.It can also lead to misspellings and misuse of words and tenses through the use of short forms and abbreviations. This is especially bad for students as it directly affects their language skills and leads to poor language performance.

It also exposes her teens, for example under the age of 18, to online predators who can induce them into sexual acts such as lesbianism and other common sexual misconduct. It also exposes these her teens to pornographic her content circulating in some social groups online. This leads to early pregnancy in young girls and their dropping out of school. They can also contract sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV, which can lead to premature death among the younger generation. Now that these teens have access to immoral books and videos, their morals are also being manipulated.

Spending hours chatting on social media also makes teens less productive. This means that young people are not independent, but are dependent on their parents and family members for their upkeep.The long hours wasted online on social media can be overwhelmed by online tutorials and online research materials. Through good use and more, it can be channeled into productive activities that can earn a living or even get an education.

Social media can also be a good platform for cybercrime and bullying, increasing the likelihood and frequency of identity theft.
This poses a lot of risks for young people as their personal information can be stolen as their personal information is stored in places they do not know or where the security is unknown or questionable.

Social Platforms also facilitates the dissemination of false information and news primarily intended to tarnish the names of other people and interest groups such as political and religious groups. This can lead to conflicts and animosity between the parties involved, and to divisions between tribes and between people of different ethnicities and tribes. , as a result, people in the community, especially loved ones, can be frequently murdered as sacrifices for cult groups.

In summary, social media has been shown to have both positive and negative effects on young people. Individuals must decide whether to continue using the site, stop using it, or even moderate it. Parents should guide and counsel their children on topical issues such as social media use and warn them of the negative effects that abuse and excessive use can have on their children. Curriculum should also be revised to include social media studies in the discipline to make students aware of the need to be careful when using social media.