The Digital Youth: Social Media & Adolescence in the 21st Century - Essay Sample

Introduction

The use of social media has been prevalently an everyday activity among the concurrent youth generation wherein the most characters associated with social media issues are teenagers in the adolescence stage (Balakrishnan et, Al 2016). Social media sites are said to be any website allowing social interaction with the inclusion of all social networking sites like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Similarly, gaming sites, video sites, blogs, and virtual worlds such You tube, club penguin, Sims, and second life are not left behind as they are also said to be the most visited internet sites by the young generation. Subsequently, such sites have developed exponentially over the recent past years and are simultaneously offering current youths with a porch for communicating and entertaining kids (Balakrishnan et, Al 2016). Therefore, in this paper, I will discuss how teenagers use the use of social media as a way of improving their expression.

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Unequivocally, research has shown that use of social media as a routine action that has come with benefit to youths especially those that are in adolescence where they have experienced social connections, that has enhanced communication and technical skills (Balakrishnan et, Al 2016). I have personally encountered such Social links, after experiencing several daily opportunities by connecting me with my schoolmates, classmates, friends, and family friends through Social media sites such as Instagram, Facebook and skype (Balakrishnan et, Al 2016). Vibrantly, the general youth population using these sites have increased simultaneously over the past five years. Recently, the report has shown that twenty-two percent of the adolescents are said to frequently log into social media site more than ten times a day (Balakrishnan et, Al 2016). Additionally, in every day, half of the adolescents use to log in more than once since teenagers possessing cell phones are Seventy-five percent of the total teenagers' population (Balakrishnan et, Al 2016).Out of the teenager's population baring cell phones, twenty-five percent use them for social media purposes, Twenty-four percent for instant messaging, and fifty-four percent use them for texting. Therefore, a great number of the young generation is concurrently using cell phones for emotional development through social media (Balakrishnan et, Al 2016). Due to their limitation on self-control, I have realized that most adolescents are at high of suffering from peer pressure as they try to cope up with social media.

Although there have been reports of ambiguous use of social media that has resulted in cyberbullying, sexting, and other inexplicit behaviors, I have recognized a set of rules and regulations to monitor and control such practices. Consequently, the law has led to composure within many parents who have begun having incredible notion and comfortable feeling while their children are using social media. However, at the same time, I have realized that there are parents that might find it difficult to relate the digital move that has prevalently taken control of the young generation due to several reasons. Unfortunately, parents having such a negative notion are lacking basic understanding concerning the incoming new forms of socializing that are important to their kid`s way of living. Additionally, I have noticed that such kind of parents lacks adequate time for keeping in touch with their children and technical proficiency to realize the daily world changes in terms of technology and internet trends.

Moreover, such caliber of parents is those that often lack the basic understanding that internet accessibility is a way of enlightening their children on various issues that are associated with the teenage stage (Zhu et al 2019).They are unaware that the result of the internet connectivity to their kids will come by with positive results that are associated with exposure. Similarly, most parents often lack the basic knowledge that the time spent by their kids during online moments come with an added advantage of equipped technical skill amongst most of these youths. It is actually through the acquisition of various skills that enhances both mental, physical, and emotional development in teenagers.

Mainly, Social media sites play a significant role in allowing teens to accomplish several critical online tasks such as sharing pictures with their friends, staying connected with friends and family, exchanging ideas as well as making new friends. Besides, the participation of Social media amongst adolescents offers extensive benefits, which develops the teenager's self-view, community view, and the world's glimpse at large (Zhu et al 2019). I have personally realized community developments are on the top indulgence by teenagers, as they are said to have organized themselves and contributing money for charity and volunteer of local community events. Consequently, the organized funding groups among teenagers have seen the realization of personal creativity by sharing musical endeavors for creativity developments. Therefore, the growth of ideas is ideal due to the creation of blogs, video games, and podcast (Zhu et al 2019).

Arguably, social media use among teens enhances expansion of individual connections by sharing the interest with those coming from more different backgrounds (Zhu et al 2019). By using such communication connections, that I have evidenced respect among the youths as well as increased personal and global issues. Fostering personal's identification has also been a common aspect created by social media use as everyone needs to acquire and exhibit new communication skills hence enhancing the freedom of expression among the youths. Additionally, the teenagers that are in high school make use of social media to connect, especially when handling their homework and group projects (Zhu et al 2019). I have noticed such activities where all schools have been closed, and all we have to do as students is to connect to gather and exchange our ideas on the assignments, especially during the current moments of pandemic crisis. Moreover, I have access to our school's teaching blog, where I regularly visit for some lectures, a thing that has benefited me by reinforcing various skills in creativity and understanding wrote expression (Zhu et al 2019).

Inherently, almost every adolescent can anonymously and efficiently access online information concerning their health issues without involving their parents (Jha et al 2016). Due to acquired skills of expression, teenagers can look for their health situations independently since health care has developed efficient health resources to be accessible to every teenager. The health resources are set in several topics of interest to this age, including ways of stress and depression reduction and treatment of sexually transmitted infections (Jha et al 2016). Thus, the availability of such health issues makes it easy for adolescents, especially with lingering questions, to have efficient access to the websites so as they can develop networks for people having such issues (Jha et al 2016). Besides, mobile technologies used by the teens are producing various improvements in healthcare assistance like disease understanding, allowance of individual appointments for consultation, and dosage prescription (Jha et al 2016).

Finally, since new mobile phones are coming with lots of applications, youth are now in a position to download the app into their phones, enquire about their health and consult with their doctors for treatment (Jha et al 2016). Pediatricians are currently in a position to assist parents with appropriate knowledge concerning the excellent use of social media to teens and adolescents. Additionally, pediatricians are also in the capability to advocate and encouraging good use of these sites. Moreover, the pediatrician should also engage in urging parents to be vigilant on the potential cyberbullying issues and other inexplicit issues associated with social media use such as Facebook, depression, sexting, and exposure to inappropriate content. (Jha et al 2016).

Conclusion

In conclusion, I recommend the use of social media among the young generation because its` advantages outweigh the disadvantages associated with social media use. Reasons for my approval are as a result of several benefits of social media to the youths, such as offering educational assistance, medical assistance, and the development of communication skills through expression. Although there are other evil impacts accompanied by social media that can ruin the young generation, parents should become responsible. Vibrantly, parents should get to know the nature of all social media sites required that not all of them are healthy and ethical to all of their adolescent children.

References

Zhu, A. Y. F., Chan, A. L. S., & Chou, K. L. (2019). Creative social media use and political participation in young people: The moderation and mediation role of online political expression. Journal of adolescence, 77, 108-117.

Balakrishnan, V., & Gan, C. L. (2016). Students' learning styles and their effects on the use of social media technology for learning. Telematics and Informatics, 33(3), 808-821.

Jha, A., Lin, L., & Savoia, E. (2016). The use of social media by state health departments in the US: analyzing health communication through Facebook. Journal of community health, 41(1), 174-179.