What are the pros and cons of youths on social media? By Maddy Fell

Categories: Social Media Social Media And Youth

Essay, Pages 4 (900 words)

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Social media has become a normal part of every day life. It is so popular that if you don't have social media, you are considered unusual. Social media is used by a range of people from different ages, backgrounds and nationalities. There are many different types of social media, the most popular being Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube. Teenagers and young adults are the most popular demographic on social media. For decades, children have kept in contact after school. Meeting at malls, meeting at friends houses, at the bus stop, or even calling each other.

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Nowadays, youths take advantage of the fact that you can easily keep in contact with friends after school. Youths like that you can easily join in on group conversations and receive news and gossip. Youths like that they can easily make friends and meet new people. Unfortunately, like anything else, social media has its downsides. There are dangers of sexual predators posing as young people.

There is the chance of cyber bulling. Personal information and pictures can be shared, you can be harassed by people that you don't know or people you do know. You can be a victim of an online scam, yourself esteem can be lowered and you can waste a lot of time, doing virtually nothing. Many argue that social media is great because you can keep in contact with family and friends from around the world. People like that can share achievements, important things that are happening in their lives and photos from their holidays.

Many people refuse to believe that bad things on social media will happen to them. Everyone recognises the danger of social media but most people say I will be careful' and if I'm careful nothing bad will happen'. People aren't cautious enough when on social media.First off, let's consider how the negative aspects of social media can effect youths. When people are behind a screen, they forget that words can hurt. From behind a screen, morals and laws and the general quality of kindness can disappear. Youths can be victim to cyber bullying, just because people don't think twice about typing something on a screen. People post images and videos that can severely disturb youths, photos and videos that include gory images, images and videos of people being killed, images and videos of dead bodies, accidents, rape, videos of people having sex, images of nude people, posing in a explicit way. All of these things are easily accessible. These things can lead to mental problems with youths. Metal breakdowns, anxiety disorders and depression is prone to youths who are exposed to images like the ones listed above. Some social media platforms are untraceable so you can post something and it can't be traced back to you. On Snapchat, you can text something or send a image of something and it immediately deletes, you can get it back. So someone could easily cyber bully someone without any evidence of it. Cyber bullying has lead to multiple cases of depression, anxiety and suicide in youths.Social media can also take up a lot of your time and In some cases, lead to addiction. Everywhere you go, people are on their phones, looking at social media. The first thing in the morning, people are on their phones, seeing if their photo got 100 likes'. At work and school, people are constantly checking social media, making sure that they don't loose streaks' with someone on Snapchat. It becomes an unhealthy obsession, everything you do has to be approved by 100 strangers online. Online, people say and do things that they would never do in real life, just to impress people. Everything is just a fa§ade. People adopt personalities that aren't there's, they keep up with every trend, just so that they can fit in'. Social media can also be a frontier for crime. The obvious crime would be cyber bullying. People share photos of other people without permission, saying nasty things, all in the name of fun. Criminals also use social media to find people. On some social media sites, it's easy to find where people live. Criminals use this information to find rich people, they can break into their homes or kind-nap them for a ransom. They use social media to find young children to kidnap and do horrible things. Excessive time on screens can also have health risks, looking at a screen for to long may lead to eye problems later on. You also have a lack of movement so you are more likely to suffer from obesity and other obesity related diseases. These things can make it hard to interact with people and get a job. On the flip side, there are many benefits to having social media. Youths can share new ideas, see what friends and family's are up to, make new friends, keep in contact tact with old friends. Social media can be useful for education, teachers are easily able to share homework with students and other teachers. Students have an easy access to free online resources. Students can collaborate with other students via social media. On an online poll that was taken, 59% of students report that they frequently use social media to discuss educational topics and 50% said they use social media to talk about school assessments.