What is social media?
Social media is a collective term for websites and applications that focus on communication, community-based input, interaction, content-sharing and collaboration. People use social media to stay in touch and interact with friends, family and various communities. Businesses use social applications to market and promote their products and track customer concerns.
Social media is a big part of many teens’ lives. A 2018 Pew Research Center survey of nearly 750 13- to 17-year-olds found that 45% are online almost constantly and 97% use a social media platform, such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat.
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. Social media has continued to gain popularity all over the world. Impacts of Social Media on youth is also quite evident in different frames of our lives. Social media has become a very important part of life for many young people in today’s world. There are many young people who dedicate most of their time to social media without even caring to think about what effect it could have on them. while the effects can sometimes be positive, it can also be negative if it is not judiciously used.
It is a huge concern for most of the people in today’s world as there are pending questions in our minds.
Is the concern with “Facebook” friends more important than those with whom we are interacting face to face in our daily lives?
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,Tik tok, Snap chat, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Google +, Gaming sites, Instagram and blogs etc. Some of these positive use can be:
Positive use of social media
1) It keeps us connected to friends whom we are not privilege’s to see or keep up with all the time.
2) Social media keeps us updated 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 fingers.
3)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.
4)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.
5)Social media can serve as a source of knowledge for educational purposes. Through social medial like Google books, Google sites, YouTube videos on educational matters, students are empowered with knowledge which widen their horizon on the perspective of topics or issues which they find difficult at first.
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 .
Negative Impact of Social Media on Youth
1) People of today’s generation give so much importance to social media 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
2) 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 to show us. Many people try to portray themselves to others what they are not at all. Fake life has become the order of the day.
3) Many young people now engage in cyber bullying. This affects 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 easily get influenced by the activities of their peers. This activities can be positive or negative and when it is negative, it can be self destructing.
There is a very strong temptation in social media, because you would always want to spend more time online and then neglecting other important things that needs to be done. So, as a young person, you need to start apportioning time to your activities both on social media and real time activities to enable you to be more productive in life. Sometimes, take time off to meet real life people and converse with them about issues of life. By doing so, you save yourself suicidal thoughts, depression, self degradation that comes with peer pressure from social media. And identifying yourself with sites and platforms that are educative and insightful is recommended. In doing so, in doing so, you would become a better person.
AASA PRESS UI 