Negative Effects of Social Media on Adolescents Essay

Introduction

Within the last twenty years, the way of socializing has significant evolved with the development of technological assets and the internet (Addo, 2013). More specifically, the emergence of social networking platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook have dominated the traditional ways of communicating and socializing. Nevertheless, such brand-new platforms are lately considered to result in both negative and positive impacts on the adolescents’ psychology, cognitive status, and physiology (Bryant, 2018). In this direction, this assignment presents insights into the adverse and positive impacts of social media, along with the developmental domains, by highlighting their significance. Accordingly, although social media is considered useful for such domains as marketing, business and improving the sense of belonging for some individuals, social media platforms can lead to physical, emotional, and cognitive effects for adolescents, along with some positive effects as the increased feeling of belonging to society.

Body Paragraphs

Developmental Domains and Strategies to Support

Adolescence, social media, and computer use are considered highly interrelated in these days. In other words, one may seldom observe an adolescent who does not make use of computers, smartphones, or social media assets. On the other hand, parents tend to ask their children when they try to create a social media account. As many researchers suggest the negative impacts on adolescents, researches as well should concentrate on such aspects of the new technology both for parents, adolescents, and society itself. Most importantly, one may readily claim a set of negative impacts on adolescents, as backed by credible findings (Byrant, 2018). However, there exist positive effects as well. For instance, adolescents can improve their technological skills by spending time with smartphones, computers and related educative pages on the internet or social media platforms.

Although adolescents can easily adapt to technology and social media assets, and they may be encouraged by their parents due to their constant technologies 'curiosity' as to how to register and sign in to platforms, social media is likely to have a negative impact on the domains of their physical development. For instance, the virtual and new body image in social media platforms can alter adolescents' perception of the body just as puberty, which is the natural cycle of a body. However, as Bryant suggests, such virtual body perceptions may lead to terrible health conditions as a result of body dissatisfaction for both genders, especially during the puberty period (7). “Social media is a tool where girls and boys can learn about body and beauty standards, especially ones with a certain culture, which can drastically impact the body image among adolescents” (Byrant, 2018, p. 8). Eventually, one may readily infer that there are many effects impacts of social media on adolescents.

Adolescents are also vulnerable to social media assets in terms of their cognitive development (as cited in Bryant, 2018, p. 12). That is, virtual and fake perceptions in the social media platforms may have negative impacts on the cognitive performance of adolescents because the adolescent years are considered the most cognitively productive. Therefore, concentrating on social media perceptions may result in poor academic performance since adolescents have a peak in abstract and critical reasoning during those years. Also, there are other assets in social media such as science and knowledge pages that trigger a sense of curiosity among adolescents.

The social-emotional development of adolescents and social media use are highly correlated as well. "Social development occurs in relation to family, school, work, and peers, and the community" (as cited in Byrant, 2018, p. 15). One may claim the danger of social media because when negative happens, the incident may lead to issues related to peer pressure, self-esteem, and even cyberbullying. These incidents may lead to depression, and even suicide (American Psychological Association, 2002). After all, one can claim that the already-vulnerable adolescent may experience trauma-related long-term issues due to unacceptable adverse effects of social media such as bullying. On the contrary, some adolescents may fulfill the required feeling of belonging to society through social media assets.

Discussion & Interpretation

There is a common fact among related medicine and psychology settings that the mental and physical health are highly interrelated. In other words, stress and negative thinking have a considerable impact on the physical health. Research finding reveal that although stress in the short-term can lead to increase in cognitive, academic, and physical performance of an individual, the human body is not designed for the long terms stress. More specifically, long term stress result in psychosomatic disease that drastically affect the physical cycle of human body and lead to stress-related diseases. In this sense, one may interpret that stress and negative thinking, and low esteem resulted from above-mentioned effects of social media may lead to serious concerns for individuals and adolescents. Also, the findings clearly inferred that adolescents are highly vulnerable in terms of their social and physical condition. In addition, there is a strong correlation between social, physical, and emotional domains of youngster, and social media have negative impacts on each. Therefore, parents, related authorities, and teenagers should be informed to have the required awareness to deal with such probable negative effects for both family, school settings, and the formation of the society. On the other hand, adolescents may find comfort in social gathering on social media platforms in terms of belonging and curiousity towards scientific or knowledgeable topics through social media pages. Overall, one may highlight both positive and negative effects of social media.

Aims of Investigation

This assignment and further proposal can be considered an investigation and projection for social media effects both on individuals and adolescents. In this sense, the main target of this assignment is to highlight the negative impacts for adolescents, along with its practical status in business activities. However, in order to comply with such goals, further analysis requires a specific set of research objective that include a pre-set time and viable time frame.In this direction, research and credible scholarly articles on the issue should be meticulously analyzed in order to have a conceptual data set. Also, the further studies should involve a statistical data to verify the conceptual facts, along with the interpretations. Proper citations according to the content are highly required to improve credibility and verification of the study. Accordingly, the use of the most popular social media platforms and the time spent on such by adolescents should be analyzed. These steps will create an awareness, interpretation, and an overview for overall hypothesis.

Conclusion

Eventually, the paper shows insights into the adverse impacts of social media, along with the developmental domains, by highlighting their significance. The impacts of social media increase proportionally with the volume and frequency of the use of social media across the world. Depression, distorted sleep routine, anxiety, along with many other disruptions are caused by the excessive involvement in social media platforms. In this sense, adolescence, social media, and computer use are considered highly interrelated in these days. Also, the virtual and new body image in social media platforms can alter adolescents' perception of the body just as puberty, which is the natural cycle of a body. However, adolescents may fulfill their need of belonging and curiosity through the to-the-point social media platforms. After all, although social media is considered useful for such domains as marketing, business and improving the sense of belonging for some individuals, social media platforms can have both negative and positive effects on adolescents.

References

Addo, A. (2013). The adoption of mobile phones: How has it changed us socially? Issues in Business Management and Economics, 1–14.

Al-Rahmi, W. M., Zeki, A. M., Alias, N., & Saged, A. A. (2017). Social Media and its Impact on Academic Performance among University Students. The Anthropologist, 28(1-2), 52–68. doi: 10.1080/09720073.2017.1317962

American Psychological Association, (2002). A reference for professionals: Developing adolescents. American Psychological Association. Accessed on ://apa.org/pi/ families/resources/develop.pdf

Barr, S. (2019, October 15). Social media negatively affects your mental health without you even knowing. Accessed on November 28, 2019, Independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/social-media-mental-health-negative-effects-depression-anxiety-addiction-memory-a8307196.html.

Barefoot, D. K., & Szabo, J. L. (2010). Friends with benefits: a social media marketing handbook. San Francisco, CA: No Starch Press.

Woods, H. C., & Scott, H. (2016). #Sleepyteens: Social media use in adolescence is associated with poor sleep quality, anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem. Journal of Adolescence, 51, 41–49. doi: 10.1016/j.adolescence.2016.05.008