Imagine having suicidal thoughts going through your head because you are not like other people. People tell you that you are not pretty or either you look at yourself and you don’t like what you see in the mirror. Imagine if your definition of pretty comes from what you see online on social media sites. All those thoughts cause teenagers to go through a deep depression and for some of them, it has led to suicidal thoughts or the act itself. Suicide is the main factor of death among teenagers in the United States. This includes social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Myspace, and other social networking platforms that have shaped the way teenagers think, behave, and communicate with other people. There are many good factors why teenagers use social media, the main is for branding and marketing products and services to the public when they are starting their first business. It allows them to attract a larger audience of people to their business, so they can be as big as companies like Nike. In terms of why people choose not to deal with social media reasons for violating their privacy are at the top of the list. Social media isn't a platform where you can just post and delete everything it doesn't work like that, once you post it, it is there forever. With everything that is going on in social media and the developing brain of a teenager, it is easy for teenagers to take any negative pressure from those sites and fall into a depression or easily adopt such negative behavior and become a bully to other people themselves. Social media plays a huge role physically and mentally in a teenager’s life. So ultimately, kids are very influenced by what the media says and what people do on the platform. Many people claim social media destroys their life more than improving because of cyberbullying, self-dissatisfaction, and health problems, and some agree that it improves their life by making it easier to communicate and market products and services.
Social media platforms have all teenagers us to share knowledge, share our interests with others, like images, and follow others, this is what teenagers today call the better way to communicate with others. Our sense of individually comes from what teenagers observe because more teenagers see, like, post, and the people teenagers follow influence our thoughts in some manner or another. It is debatable that social media is both a blessing and a curse to our generation. Most people say it’s a blessing because teenagers are interacting with other teenagers would not normally communicate with or meet physically, and some believe it's a curse because it puts teenagers at risk of being cyberbullied by sharing everything about their lives so freely. Teenagers can be bullied for their religion, hobbies, career choices, body imaging, and even for the clothing, they teenagers. Cyberbullying can happen to anyone and examples of it include when a person makes fun, causes mental and emotional harm, threatens another person, or act in an undesirable way to another person online. According to the Pew Research Center, 90% of teenagers have a cell phone and probably the same amount uses social media. This puts them at an increased risk to experience cyberbullying at some point in their teenage life. This is where teenagers should decide how much information from their personal lives to share on social media to keep people from being able to cyberbully their life that is not protecting on social media. This will put a stop to unwanted and aggressive cyberbully behavior among people on the platform. On social media there are a lot of teenagers wanting to be liked by everyone, comparing themselves to others, and even more of them creating friendships with people online rather than in person. Communication by teenagers is mainly over social media rather than in person. So much that teenagers consider their online friends as their real friends, so communication mainly happens online and over the phone rather than in person. The plus is that teenagers can meet new people and cope in a diverse environment and the negative is that this behavior increases social anxiety among teenagers. One that leads to depression, negative body imaging, unhealthy sleep conditions, unhealthy eating, suicide or suicidal thoughts, and self-dissatisfaction. Teenage boys suffer from self-dissatisfaction too, they are just better at hiding it because they feel uncomfortable about admitting it. According to Katie Hurley, “those who had spent more time on social media had 2.2 times the risk of reporting eating and body image concerns, compared to their peers who spent less time on social media putting them 2.6 times at risk for self-satisfaction”. There is nothing a teenager can do to control because on social media everyone looks perfect. Boys that don’t workout are now going to the gym to be like other guys that are fitter and girls that are not skinny are either working out or doing extreme diets to fit in. While teenagers can argue that its motivation for a healthier lifestyle, they need to consider that not everyone is doing it healthily. Teenage girls are also changing themselves by wearing extreme makeup, tighter clothing, and acrylic nails just to combat self-dissatisfaction rather than go to therapy. Social media leads to extreme curiosity for teenagers as teenagers are at that age where teenagers are growing up and figuring things out. This exposure leads teenagers to envy each other and in return that depression can lead to extreme health issues. According to Sabrina Barr, this includes extreme conditions like “memory loss, sleeping issues, attention span issues, loneliness”, and other depressive issues. To stop this problem social media should include a required quiz for young teenagers to complete regarding how to identify, fight, and report bullies to reduce health problems in teenagers using those platforms. Some people would argue that an individual should not care what others think, but not everyone is strong enough to take on this kind of attitude and just because a person may seem unbothered by this does not mean that it is not affecting their health. It has nothing to do with them being a teenager's person and everything to do with the fact that teenagers cannot control even our brains. Social media is addictive for some teenagers and it can affect a teenager’s overall health.
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While social media has some negatives, there are also many positive outcomes on social media, the main is its connectivity to the whole world and its convenience which is why it is a part of everyone’s life. Many people have chosen it’s more enjoyable to communicate over social media than the phone or in-person like I mentioned above. “Just like landline telephones enable long-distance relationships with more people, social media allow people to be connected in a meaningful way with more people than before”, says Dr. Myhr. Social media is an amazing platform for business owners to take full advantage of for their business. It is also a great way for owners to build a new audience and get to show off their personality without it conflicting with what they are selling. Social Media overall does a good job of strengthening relationships and creating a relationship between everyone it helps strengthen relationships because it is a platform that is easy to contact your friends. It helps create tons of relationships by giving you a chance to show yourself off with people getting to like your photos and follow you if they like your style. Students can learn different things from social media based on creativity and social experience. It allows kids to raise money to donate to any charity that would like, enhance their creativity, grow from the creation of their blogs, podcasts, videos, and it helps them to become more social towards our community. These factors help children to become fully independent and get a chance to navigate the world without their parents being overall their decisions.
Even though social media is very beneficial to our society, there are still a few downs on social media due to a lack of privacy practices and enforced rules. Social media does not secure private information, so a hacker will be able to hack personal information at any time without permission. And, sometimes predators get a hold of the information and social media users become victims. Many girls fear being raped, stalked, kidnapped, or killed because of these hacking situations. An online predator is a person who looks to create a relationship with teenagers on a social networking platform. They lure teenagers to them by lying to them, sexting them, and by pretending they care about them. Sexting is very life-threatening to teenagers especially over social media because it can cause emotional health issues that will later ruin a teenager’s life. Especially, since “20% of teens have sent or posted nude or semi-nude photographs or videos of themselves”. Teenagers should be prohibited from texting and exposure to sexual content should be restricted until age 18. Parents need to talk to their teenagers about inappropriate behavior online and schools should educate teenagers on the effects of inappropriate behavior. All these harmful effects on teenagers aren't good, it might help keep us connected and be very convenient but isn't worth dying for or use getting hurt. I'm sure the creators didn't ever intend for their social networking platform to go down-hill and be as negative as it is today.
In conclusion, the positive is that social media helps people communicate independently, nationwide in a diverse environment, attracts a larger audience of customers and in return it allows companies to boost sales and increase profits. So many teenagers have become popular on social media and it has led to career opportunities for them, and it has led small companies to compete with large big-name companies like Nike nationwide. The downside is that social media has affected teens' mental health and appearance outwards in several ways and it has been proven by numerous people. It affects our inner mind and makes us not appear like our normal self. It makes us very envious and wants to live others' lives instead of loving our own. These sites can be very beneficial towards our communities but teenagers just have to approach it in ways that do not put our lives in danger while trying to enjoy getting the benefits of social media. To protect teenagers from all these harmful things that will affect them mentally and physically, parents need to monitor their children by watching what they are doing on this platform.
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