As a result of the dramatic growth of Social media in about a decade, it has propagated diverse sharing of ideas, information, career interests and other typical forms of expressions through virtual networks and communication. According to the statistics available currently on Pew Research Centre, 92% of youths are said to go online daily with 24% who are constantly online and 6% who go online weekly and merely 2% who occasionally visit the internet. Broadly speaking serves to be a trend that is favoured upon by todays youth and hence it is amongst the critical innovation that has been achieved within the last decade. The youths visualise social media to have positively impacted on the lives, but still, there are still outstanding arguments on the drastic growth of social media.
Evidently, every youth has experienced or used social media in one way or another. Most of them have pointed out exemplary positive outcomes Posted by social media with a few noting potential adverse impacts related to the same. But the bitter truth remains that, social media possess both negative and positive effects to the youths. The pros related to social media use include the following; first, it capacitates the development of social skills. Most teens have reported significant results on the basis benefits from this aspect. Over 25% said that it makes them feel courageous, 28% feel outgoing, and 20% feel more confident (Fuchs 18). Other teens have reported having acquired friends from the sites, especially who are less adept socially. Whereas most students who imperatively tend to be quiet indeed have also ascertained that they feel more comfortable when they communicate via social networking sites.
Secondly, social media promotes individuals empowerment by creating awareness about the world and the society in general especially to the youths who live in a sheltering life. It also helps to discover and nurture new talents through the interactive watching, sharing and posting of comments by viewers thus promoting the producers and encouraging them. Thirdly, social media supports education. It is speculated that over 80% of the US University and College Tutors use the platform;30% are said to utilise it pass messages to students with over 50% using it for teaching purposes (Provenzano 20). Additionally, educators globally have been known to interact and in conjunction bring guest librarians, teachers, experts and authors via twitter and skype with the objective of promoting learning in institutions.
On the contrary, there are several cons linked to the use of social networking platforms, to mention a few they include the following; they have been known to promote isolation significantly. Cases such as low self-esteem, depression, and poor eating disorders have been reported to be exacerbated by social media. Also, the photos, messages and videos posted without incoming comments or likes as feedback promote loneliness. Consequently, social media serves as grounds for expanding bullies. According to Berlatsky (50), about 33.7% of youths assert to have committed bullying with 49.5% to have been victimised of the same issue. The Consumer Report Survey of 2012 June reports that approximately 800,000 teens got bullied and harassed on Facebook. Besides, on education, social media capacitates cases of relationships that are inappropriate between students and educators. As a result of the dynamic interactions that is unsupervised, it has potentially triggered sexual relationship between teachers and students. Based on statists from Berlatsky (61) about 86 cases of the same nature were reported with a greater bearing linked to the rise of social media.
In conclusion, as much as social media tends to have favoured the trend upon our today's youths and serving as an ideal innovation achieved within a decades time. It should be made clear that such platforms have significantly influenced the young people on both negative and positive outcomes. It has promoted education, empowerment and social skills among many other advantages. But the same social media has encouraged bullying, isolation among other related issues. The arguments on the same should proceed to counteract the cons related to them by developing monitoring systems so as to kerb or minimise such cases.
Works Cited
Berlatsky, Noah. Are Social Networking Sites Harmful? 2015.
Fuchs, Christian. Social Media. Sage Publications, 2016.
Provenzano, Grace. Journalism Secrets to Social Media Storytelling & News Reporting. 2016.
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