Youth: Social Networking Sites

The Bad Effects of Social Media on the Youth
Introduction
In present day, it is admitted that social media increased popularity rapidly. It is made possible by millions of users especially by teens, university and college students. There are different types of social media which are utilized by the youths such as social networking sites, online games or sites, video sites, blogs, text messaging, smart phone games and applications, televisions and movies. The most commonly used by the youth is the social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. These social networking sites have become a raging craze for everyone nowadays.Through it they can achieve online the activities that are important to them offline; staying connected with family and friends, making new friends, sharing life events through pictures and videos and exchanging ideas. There are a lot of benefits that social media gives to today’s youth aside from using it as communication tool also it can help them on their homework, research papers it also enables them to work part time online and do business by online selling. And of course, social media gives entertainment through televisions, movies and video sites such YouTube. Though social media gives a lot of positivity in today’s youth but the negative overweighs the positive. We should not just look and think that they are very good invention but also we must know its bad effects to them. These social media specifically the social networking sites have caused a lot of potential harm to the society. The most common victims of it are the youth specially those who are still studying. Students when studying or searching their course material online get attracted to these sites and try to kill their boredom in their study time, diverting their attention from their work. Their study time is deprived because they spend their time in social networking which is fun by far than studying. As a result, they will get lower grades than usual. Aside from that there are more serious issues and bad effects which social media brings to the youth such as cyber bullying, electronic aggression or online harassment, sexting, being exposing to pornographies and it also affect the mental and physical health. Despite these alarming bad effects still many youth manage to continue using social networking sites. According to a national poll in San Francisco, C.A. by Common Sense Media in 2009, 22% of teens check their sites more than 10 times a day, 39% of teens have posted something but later regretted it, 37% of teens have used sites to make fun of other students, 25% of teens have created a profile with false identity, 24% of teens have hacked into someone else’s social-networking account, 13% of teens have posted nude or seminude pictures or videos of themselves online. This poll shows how the youth involves in so much social media and truly it gives bad effect to them.

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