Increased use of Social Media can harm our youth

Increased use of social media can harm our youth

By Christopher Vitale

Do parents know what sort of things that their children are doing on their phones? In the age of technology most teens cannot go anywhere without their cellphones. Cell phones have endless amounts of things you can do. Which makes it very difficult to control what is being said or done by our youth. This can lead to our youth engaging in harmful or unhealthy behaviors.

Social media is at the top of the spectrum in which our youth can harm one another. Having the capability to send copious amounts of people a message or posting something on Twitter or Instagram so every one of their friends can see it, is something that is very difficult to control.

In a study done in Canada, it was found that almost ninety percent of teens in the U.S. have a cell phone. “In the US, the proportion of young people between the ages of 14 and 17 years who have a smartphone has reached 89%, more than doubling over a 6-year period; moreover, 70% of teenagers use social media multiple times per day, up from a third of teens in 2012.” (Abi-Jaoude, Naylor Pignatiello) Thinking about how much our technology has improved every single year.

This study also looked at the way that social media and mental distress are linked, and how this affects the suicide rates in adolescents. “A recent analysis of survey data found the 12-month prevalence of suicidal ideation, attempts and non-suicidal self-injury to be 8.1%, 4.3% and 8.8%, respectively, among adolescents aged 14 to 17 years, with all rates being higher in girls.” (Abi-Jaoude, Naylor Pignatiello)

Along with the affect’s cellphones have with regards to social media, the ways in which we communicate has been changed since technology has improved. The social aspect of life has been ever changed since technology. Adolescents are at the point where their face-to-face communication is almost nonexistent, because why would they talk face to face, when they could text or talk on the phone.

The change?

Adolescents these days have never known our world to be anything without social media. It is difficult to try and retract our youth from the world that they are in today, but the best we can do is to limit the exposure that they have to social media. With the technology that is in our world today, there are endless things that could happen.

References
Elia Abi-Jaoude, Karline Treurnicht Naylor and Antonio Pignatiello
CMAJ February 10, 2020