Impact of Social Media on Youth : Positive & Negative Effects of Social Media

In today’s world, all of us are experiencing this thing that social media is developing day by day. Most of the people around the world are using social media. This is very popular among the young generation especially. Even if you look at the statistics, you will come across the same story. Social media is continuing to gain popularity every day. Impacts of Social Media on youth is also quite evident in different frames of our lives. Let us have a look at some of the stat

Social Media Trivia: Brush Up Your Knowledge

Here are some statistics that were done on social media.

• The average time spent by the people per day on the social network is 1.72 hours
• For the teenagers, the numbers are much higher which is up to 27 hours per week

Social media has become a very important part of life for many young generations in today’s world. There are many young people who keep on engaging themselves with social media without even caring to think about what would be the impact of Social Media on youth. The effects can sometimes be positive and sometimes be negative but mostly they are negative if it is not integrated with a business or professional goal.

It is a huge concern for most of the people in today’s world as what is more important?

Is the concern with “Facebook” friends more important than those with whom we are interacting face to face in our daily lives? What can be the long-term impact of social media on youth today?

There are a lot of positive aspects but there are many dangers as well that come with the use of the sites like Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Google +, Gaming sites, Instagram and blogs. If we want to make some right and true choices then we must dig inside and research the topic thoroughly.

Here are five ways which one can say that technology is having a positive influence on youth.

Positive Impact of Social Media on Youth

• It keeps connected to their friends when they are not able to see each other always when they want to
• Social media keeps you updates about the important things that are going across the globe currently or maybe in your locality. It is a great benefit to know about everything just by the simple click of your finger.
• The youths have the perfect place to express themselves in such a way in which they won’t be allowed to do in public. This is something which makes the youth feel better about them and they hold some position in society.
• It helps you in developing social skills and the best part is that a number of friendships can begin from the social website. Youths generally like make new friends and know about others as much as they can. All of this is possible with the social media platform
• One more interesting impact of social media on youth is that it feels fun to interact with peers rather than talking to them face to face

Now, we tell you five ways that we all have seen technology is having a negative influence on the young generation.

Negative Impact of Social Media on Youth

• People of today’s generation give so much importance to social media nowadays that it has become their priority. They love being in the social media sites and forget about all the things that should come first for them like family, sports and schools
• In the platforms of social media, we can only see the virtual side of the person. This means we can only see the side which they want they want to show us. Many people try to portray themselves to others which they are not at all
• Young people have this habit of bullying their peers which is ok to some extent. But when it comes to cyberbullying, it affects a lot to the other peer as this can be on the newsfeed of any person and can go viral easily. Sometimes such things can lead to depression as well as suicidal thoughts
• There are some young people who are very easy to get influenced. They may feel the need to change their appearance physically and compare themselves to every next person they see in the social media
• There is a very strong temptation in social media. It can become an addiction for the youth and begin to side-track them

Let us now deep dive into some other positive & negative sides of social media-

Here are the positive sides of social media

Positive Impact of Social Media on Youth in different Sectors

Educational Aspects

• Social media enables the teacher to collaborate easily and then communicate with the students and others
• The students have free as well as easy access to the resources that are online and gain all the information
• The grades are improved and the percentage of absentees are reduced
• According to a survey, it has been found out that about 59% of the schools have admitted that their students take help of the social media for educational purposes. Along with it 50% them use social media in order to discuss the assignments of the school

Political Aspects

• The participation of the voters has increased. The users of the platform of Facebook have admitted that they get the inspiration to vote in an election when they see online their friends have voted too. A survey reported that those who visited Facebook more than two times in a single day were more likely to attend a political meeting or rally- 43% more people said that they are sure to vote.
• Social media gives birth to the idea of change in politics. Social networking gives the social movement cheap as well as a quick method for distributing the information and make the people come together

News/ Awareness

• Around 30% of the people of America get their news from online. The information in the social networking sites spreads much faster than any other forms of media.
• More than 50% of people in the world nowadays get the breaking news from a social media platform
• The social networking sites provide the benefits academic research to the people along with the online access. This helps the people to get access to the resources that were unavailable before
• The people who use the platforms of social media get empowered and informed to change their communities and themselves.

Social Aspects

• With the help of social media, people can communicate with friends and this enhanced communication online strengthens the relationship between them. Survey says around 52% of the teens that remain online say social media have helped them with their friendships and around 88% of the people say that staying online has helped them stay in touch with the friends they don’t see regularly
• As said earlier, young people always have this tendency to make new friends. Around 57% of the teens that remain online say that they make new friends on social media

Jobs for the Youth

• Social media is one of the best ways for marketing products, connecting with people and find business opportunities
• It helps the employers to get the employees and those who are in search of new jobs. Around 87% of the job recruiters have found their employers through LinkedIn, around 30% through Facebook and 15% through Twitter
• The social media sites are the reasons for creating thousands of job opportunities for the people and they have brought new avenues of income

Negative Impact of Social Media on Youth in different Sectors

Here are some of the Negative Impact of Social Media on youth-

Work/School

• Social media helps the students to cheat on school assignments and for those who work can get some idea about their work
• If social media is used on a light scale, it will help the students to improve their grades. However, for those students who are heavy users, their grades tend to fall incredibly. A study shows that students who are using Facebook have an average GPA of 3.06 while those who don’t use Facebook have an average GPA of 3.82
• On average of 106 minutes in every 90 minutes that is spent on Facebook college students drop their grades to .12
• The social media platform affects the productivity of the employees to .51%. These workers are generally between the age of 25-34 and check their social media during work

Lacking Privacy

• One thing that is seen common among the young people is they often get too open in the public and share their personal information. Most of the people don’t read the privacy policies and are unaware that their information that the information is read by the insurance companies, advertisers and the IRS.
• They expose themselves to the governmental and corporate intrusions. The justice department of the US gather hundreds of pieces of information from the social networks and email every year.

Cyber Bullying

• One of the very prime negative impact of social media on youth as some of the negative minded individuals use it for bullying someone
• People use it for sending intimidating messages to others that sometimes create trauma for the others as well
• Misinformation or false propaganda is another negative impact of social media on youth

So, utilizing Social Media in a constructive and productive manner are the things for which youth should use it because if they do so, its advantages are unlimited.

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