Research paper
Louis1999
SocialMediaDraft1.docxRunning Head: How Social Media Can Affect Children 1
How Social Media Can Affect Children 6
How Social Media Can Affect Children
Abdullah Zabidi
Alycia Pardoe
Florida Institute of Technology
Introduction
According to the previous research, there are two forms of digital media; the traditional form and the new trending form. Both forms of digital media surround the current generation. The traditional digital media is the form of information represented in the Radios and the televisions. The new digital media form concerns the information shared through the social media platforms like the YouTube, Facebook, What’s up, LinkedIn and Twitter among others (Baccarella et al, 2018). However, despite the great immersion of our children and adolescents to both forms of digital media, there are benefits and risks that come along with the use. Both of the two forms of digital media offers various kinds of information which may revolve around learning, entertainment, marketing social engagements and other forms of interactions. The use of digital media can affect the lives of the children and adolescents either positively or negatively (Jordan & Romer, 2014).
Positive impact of the digital media to the lives of our children and adolescents
As mentioned above, the use of digital media can affect the life of a person not only children either negatively or positively. Through social media, our children and adolescent can gather knowledge and get exposed to information that helps them to improve the performance in their studies. For example, they can research data through the internet or even gather ideas on how to write their compositions in school. Another benefit is that social media provides our children with groups that help them to acquire opportunities in improving their life skills and their goal in life (Dunbar, 2016).
Through social media, children and teenagers learn more critical information through interactions with other people of their age or with adults. They can get advice on how to handle various matters of life through these social interactions. Based on the motivating experiences shared on social media, children and teens follow the same directions and end up being successful in their lives. Children and teenagers may also benefit health wise by seeking medication from doctors over social media. This happens especially when the child or teen is not free to share their health issue with their parents. Social media offers them an opportunity to share out the health problem with others. It does not have to be a doctor, but also they could end up benefiting by getting advice from individuals who have had the same health issue before. Children and teenagers can learn various ways in which they can maintain good health through the information learned about personal hygiene and food nutrition at various stages of life ( Aljazzaf, 2017).
Negative impact of the digital media to the lives of our children and adolescents
Social media can also impact negatively to children and teens. Social media display all kinds of information to the public. Children and teens have been able to access information that is not of their age but meant for adults. This has negatively affected this young generation. For example, children and teens through social media have learned various methods of family planning. This information is meant for adults only, but the teens will practice the same and end up being infertile in the future. Through the social media children and teen join groups or learn about some immoral act. Some of these unethical behaviors involve having sex before marriage which results in school dropout and a poverty life since they got no sources of finance to take care of the baby. Due to early pregnancies teen tend to have abortions which cause death to them or spoil their uterus which end up traumatizing them when they need a baby in the future, but they cannot bear their own.
Children and teens have been able to join crime acts over social media. Some of the terrorists, robbery, and theft groups have their social media pages which recruit new people promising them the best. Teens get convinced and join such groups in search of money which end them into jails or death. Drug abuse is another negative impact that children and teens learn through the internet. They will tend to try using the same drugs displayed over the media which result in them to drugs addicts. From past experiences, extreme drug abuse results in madness and other health complications. It can also result in death due to the overreaction of the drug with the person’s body. Drugs abuse is one of the factors that can lead to criminal acts as a way of looking for money to buy drugs (Turner, 2015).
Conclusion
To sum up, all parents in the world should take control of how their children and teens use social media. This will help ensure that our kids get access to useful information, not that will harm them. The owners of the social media platforms should also come with ways of limiting information with who to access it. This will make the digital media better for children and teens since they can only get access to information that is of use to them (Chassiakos et al, 2016).
References
Children and Adolescents and Digital Media. (2016, November 1). Retrieved from https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/138/5/e20162593
Do online social media cut through the constraints that limit the size of offline social networks?Royal Society Open Science. (2015, June). Retrieved from https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsos.150292
Effect of Social Media Applications on Kuwaiti Teenagers: An Empirical Study. (2017, November 21). Retrieved from http://www.sciepub.com/AJAMS/abstract/8296
Generation Z: Technology and Social Interest. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://muse.jhu.edu/article/586631/pdf
Social Media? It's Serious!: Understanding the Dark Side of Social Media by Christian Baccarella, Timm Wagner, Jan Kietzmann, Ian P. McCarthy :: SSRN. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3221756
