Essay on the Effects of Social Media on Youth
Social media has been deeply rooted in our society to an extent that it is almost impossible for anyone to survive without it. It is not for a specific age group but for everyone to socialize and interact with each other. It is a bandwagon into which everyone has jumped to stay active and updated on the events and circumstances happening around.
Also, there are many social networks available for people like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter. With the popularity and increased use of social media, everyone has mixed feelings and views about it. The main question which must be addressed is regarding the effects of social media on youth. You can answer this question by looking at both positive and negative effects from every aspect.
Education
The major positive effect of social media is getting education and information. It helps teachers to communicate and collaborate with students easily. Also, it is easier for the students now to have access to online resources and websites. As a result, the absenteeism gets reduced while the grades are significantly improved. It is quite obvious from the research that students who use social media networks tend to perform better in academics than those who don’t.
Politics
Another huge positive effect is the active participation of people in politics. Different social networking websites especially Facebook has caused to increase the likelihood of people voting and presenting their political views on different platforms. Moreover, social media has given enough power to the social movements to make them quicker and smoother. It is a very effective method which can be utilized to gather political information and people for active services.
Social Benefits
There are many social benefits as well which allow people to strengthen their relationships and friendships through online communication. More than 57% of the people have reported that they have made new friends online. But it also has a downside as it is equally likely to develop misunderstandings, hatred, and rivalries through social media networking platforms.
Lack of Privacy
When it comes to negative effects of social media, lack of privacy has to be on the top. People especially the youth is now obsessed with sharing everything about their lives on social media. It allows others to intervene in their personal matters and threaten them. It is quite evident that a lot of people especially young girls tend to lose their private pictures and data because of the social media sites. It leads a lot of such girls towards suicide and other mental issues as well.
Social Detriments
Cyberbullying has become really popular in the past few years. People are using social media to send intimidating messages to each other which is resulted as trauma, suicide, and other criminal cases. Also, it causes to reduce the amount of time for the face-to-face interaction with your loved ones.
It has become really important to limit the use of social media and keep a check on the activities of your loved ones to save them from its devastating negative effects.
