Mahjoub 1

Ryan Mahjoub
Professor Adam Padgett
ENGL: 1102
3-31-2014
Social media Vs. Youth
Do you know what social media done to you? Social media has cause more
changes than many think. Social media offers a distraction from life and giving you an
outlet to express yourself in a different way, also allowing you to see the way others wish
to portray themselves. Youth primarily is affected by its glamour and appeal of the
popularity surrounding social media. Social media changed the way children develop
mentally, and socially from the past.
A study by CBC News was done by asking kids what they wanted, which in past
generation was to fit in, but today it is money and fame. Social media can be seen to have
a huge impact on this generation. When asking a middle school class who texted and who
has a Facebook or Instagram most of them raised their hands. Many of them seemed to
find happiness in the ability social media give them to be liked by others. They enjoyed
the fact that they could post a photo and have a friend like it or comment on it and give
them a complement. However there is also a bad side to social media also, cyber bulling.
Cyber bulling is where you get bullied over social media and is the cause of many teens
suicides. Correlating a study which found that empathy can only be expressed when day
dreaming where people today are so busy with other thing that they do not day dream and
this is creating a world of less empathic people.

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Technology has changed the way young people learn. In the past, students would
read books to gather information, however today you see students reading content off of
their iPads and Kindle. They are able to gather information off of ebooks and apps,
which offer social media option, such as note sharing, social highlighting, real-time book
discussions, ratings, tags, and links to Facebook and Twitter. People are able to
communicate instantly with one another on a broader view. Social media incorporates
numerous diverse views on topics. Social media is also considered a source of knowledge
today. Young people give feedback on relevant new topics in the media offering
information to the public through social media highlighting, real-time book discussions,
ratings, tags, and links to Facebook and Twitter. With this new technology it bring a new
social way of learning, where you are able to use other people to gather information,
Ninety percent of school-aged youth now use the Internet regularly, with over 75% of
adolescents aged 12 to 17 using social media. (Mastronardi ) I can see social media as a
way to gain information due to the overwhelming amount of people who use it. There
are connections between high school student and college-aged youth using social media,
and to cognitive, psychological, and social factors of adolescent development that
educational researchers, educators, parents, and administrators presumably care about,
such as learners development of self-identity, self-confidence, reading, writing, civic
engagement, and social capital. It has been seen to sometimes hinder adolescent social
behavior and develop learning disorders. I feel that social media can affect peoples self-
confidence, the psychological disposition, and the way they socialize. Due to their
overwhelming use of social media I feel it could change the way young people grow up.
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Social media develops the mindset of how the youth view what is cool and what
is lame. Social media broadcasts their views of how people should look and what they
should do if they want to be popular by offering celebrities as role models for them to
follow. Often times social media displays celebritys scandals and put them in the spot
light. Giving the idea to the youth that they have to fit the social norm. Social media
portrays sexting as cool. Often times celebrity scandals involving sex tapes getting leaked
or nudes of celebrity being shown to the public makes that person instantly popular which
teens often relate to being cool. This can be seen with Paris Hilton and her sex tape A
Night In Paris, where after it was released everyone knew who she was and she got her
own show. Media instigates young people to send naked pictures of themselves to others..
Studies show there have been correlations between young people whom have been seen
with more sexual photo on social media cites such as MySpace and Facebook, or ones
whom have sent nude photos of themselves, to have a high rate of teen pregnancy. There
seems to be a correlation between how sexual someone is and he attention they receive. I
believe there is a correlation between what pictures girls post on their social media cite
and how or what attention they receive. In my own experiences people who posted
photos of themselves with their bodies hardly covered, by what they call clothing, they
are more likely get more likes on that photo or more comment than if they were fully
clothed. With more attention it pushes girls to be more sexually active due to pressure by
others.

The type of social media that you are exposed to makes the most difference on the
effect it has on the person. Barbara Wilson concluded that the content of the media with
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which the children would be exposed to would have more influence over their action than
just the sheer amount of time they spend in from the screen. I disagree that with
everything there is a point of time to invest in something, and with everything, too much
is a bad thing. Wilson begins by reviewing evidence on the link between media and
childrens emotions. Children can learn about the nature and cause of different emotions
from watching the emotional experiences of media characters and those they often
experience empathy with those characters. As a child you are more likely to do what you
see people doing around you. It matters what you are exposed to the most however the
amount you are exposed to can cause a greater effect on youth. Children pick up on what
they see around them, what they see on social media creates a mold for childrens
thoughts. It is hard for children to distinguish what to think and not to think at early ages,
and they just go with whats going on around them. If bad habits repeatedly keep
happening around them will have a more likely chance of sticking with them than that of
something, which happened once. When looking at comments of people bulling people
for one reason or another on social media it is hard for them to think for themselves and
not just follow what everyone else is doing. Even as young adults you see students in
middle school picking on someone over social for a reason or another. It could be for that
person being over weight, or too skinny, or the fact that they are pale.
Teens spend up to half their waking hours on some form of social media. Bring up
the idea that social media has a negative effect on youth while studding, creating a
distraction, Experimental studies confirm that young people who do school work with
either a television or music in the background tend to perform more poorly than students
who do not. I agree that students who try and multi-task with media while trying to
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study often do worse than those who do not. When writing a paper with my phone out
checking Facebook or with music playing in the background I notice that I forget to insert
words into sentences and misspell more words than if I was just writing a paper and
nothing else. I also makes a connection with Adolescents who are heavy consumers of
mass media forms targeted to young audiences are more likely to report that they engage
in risky behaviors, that is, activities that are linked to outcomes such as teen pregnancy,
juvenile delinquency, and early school withdrawal. I see how they could make this
connection, normally student with bad grades tend to fall within the terms of engaging in
risky behavior more than those of people I know with good grades.
Over using social media can result in a negative affect on youth grades. Often
times people who spend too much time on social media tend to have lower grades in
their classes, and are more socially aware of their surrounding. They seem to care more
about what is going on around them then they do about why or how. Over using social
media has caused the attention spans of many teens to go down. Social media has a
control on the teen population, in that it seems that they have to always cheek social
media whenever they do something. Social media is taking away from peoples days and
replacing once family time with Facebook and twitter. Social media seemed to must be
checked everyday. Many teen state, I could not go a week without my phone, or forms
of social media. We are the generation of people who are plugged in. It is hard for us to
not be reliant of the use of technology, and social media. It seems that there are more
positives to not participating in social media than there is in participating in it. It would
be a good idea for all of youth to take some time away from social media and reflect on
the hold it has on them.
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Work Cited
CBC News. How social media is affecting teens. Video. Online Video Clip.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QWoP6jJG3k . YouTube, 24 Feb. 2014.
Web. 5 May 2014.
Greenhow, C. "Youth, Learning, and Social Media." Journal of Educational Computing
Research. 45.2 (2011): 139-146. Print.
Hasinoff, A.A. "Sexting As Media Production: Rethinking Social Media and Sexuality."
New Media and Society. 15.4 (2013): 449-465. Print.
Mastronardi, Maria. "Adolescence and Media." Journal of Language and Social
Psychology. 22.1 (2003): 83-93. Print.
"Media and Children's Aggression, Fear, and Altruism." The Future of Children. 18.1
(2008): 87-118. Print.