Social Media Use Among The Youths

INTRODUCTION

Social media have become vital parts of life for millions of young people today. Most of these youths engage with social media without stopping to enquire about the impacts of social media on their lives what, whether positive or negative. Teenagers across the globe constantly and regularly use the internet, mobile phones, and video games to collect data and exchange messages with each other. This ability to communicate with others is the core feature of social media which provides powerful new techniques for youths for formulating and executing their social environments. Teen’s use of social media progresses gradually with their developing identity, emerging sexuality, physical growth and moral identity. The paper will discuss the causes of the increase in social media among the youths and its impacts in the modern world.

Social media enable youths to exchange ideas, to post/tweet thoughts and comments, or to take part in activities and events while sharing their wider interests. Social media platforms are now used for a host of various reasons by different teens that include general communication, propagating breaking news, scheduling hook ups, following election results, coordinating natural disaster response, gentle humor, and school work research. Young adults have been the heaviest users of social media by a significant margin, and today there is a staggering 95% of them are actively on social media, according to a 2015 Pew Research Center study. That’s a 79% increase from the 11% who were using social media a decade ago. Another Pew study established that 83% of young adults that online prefer Facebook, and about 54% of them prefer Instagram, Rounding out the platforms covered by the report is Twitter, used by about 33% of this population (Bányai et.al 2017).

Causes of the increase in social media use

Social Benefits.

Social media allow youths of today to keep in touch with their friends, and this increased online communication cements those relationships. 51% of online teens confessed that social media have helped their friendships and thus a key contributor to the growth in the social media use. 89% say being online helps them stay in touch with friends that live far away from them and whom they don't get to see often. People make new friends on social media that turns out to be long time friendships, 56% online teens report making new friends via social media than through face to face communication (Valenzuela, S., Bachmann, I., & Aguilar, M. 2016).

Awareness/Being Informed.

30 % of people get their news online. 29% of them get it from newspapers and 11% from radio. These statistics shows that Information spreads faster online than any other platform. More than 50% of the youth get breaking news on social media, and this has led to the increase in social media use among the young people (Jelenchick, L. A., Hawk, S. T., & Moreno, M. A. 2016). Social media platforms provide academic research to people with reliable online access, allowing them access to previously unavailable materials. Social media sites inform and empower youths to change themselves and their society.

Boye and Yan (2016) attest that there has been a gap in the literature that gives insight into the factors underpinning the abuse and neglect of elderly with dementia in care and nursing homes in England. There is a lack of substantial literature that thoroughly analyses these issues and gives researchers and policymakers in England an in-depth knowledge about the research topic. Against the backdrop of limited research on abuse and neglect of elderly dementia patients in health care organisations in England, the proposed research would explore the aspects leading to the abuse and neglect of elderly with dementia in care and nursing homes in England.

Though it is known that elderly patients suffering from dementia are commonly subjected to mistreatment and abuse in hospitals or care homes, little has been done to address the physical, emotional, and psychological abuse. The vulnerability of this population towards abuse is more as the patients are not able to express their feelings and experiences. A rising public concern can only be formed when there is enough guiding knowledge on the reasons behind such abuses. Risks for abuse can be reduced if there is provision for training, support, legal protection and ongoing supervision. The healthcare sector calls for research to highlight the underlying factors behind such patient abuse. The proposed research would examine the literature related to maltreatment of elderly dementia patients in care and nursing homes and thereby argue for the policy which can have the basis of a multi-systems approach. The research could identify areas for future research in dementia care domain and evaluate current healthcare policies in England. The research aims to identify factors that protect the health of elderly suffering from dementia and help this population to live with dignity, security, and confidence in care and nursing homes. There would be a positive change brought in healthcare settings in terms of care service provided to this population (Cahill, O'Shea & Pierce, 2012). Visual content

Young people are hugely visible and are excited by things that permit them to express their creativity in a visual way. Social media platforms like Snapchat and Instagram, both visual by nature, are capturing the interest of the young generations at a very fast rate. Snapchat is more popular since the videos and images posted there are not permanent a fact that directly addresses

the generation’s issue about privacy and security. That combination of visual and impermanence in a social media platform is the key to this generation’s social media usage growth. The increase in social media use has also been facilitated by the easy access to mobile devices, according to (Schou Andreassen et.al 2016) nearly three-quarters of youths today have or have access to a smartphone, and 30% have a primary phone. The smartphone makes it easy to access various social media platforms and connect with people.

Impacts of social media use

Cyber-bullying is common on social media, and it causes emotional trauma which at times leads to suicide. 49 % of youths reported victimization by bullying online, and 34 % admitted to online bullying (Sidani, J. E et.al 2016). Middle school children who experienced cyberbullying stand a higher risk of trying to kill themselves. Extensive social media engagement is linked with personality and brain disorders such as bad social skills, narcissistic tendencies, depression, loneliness and addictive tendencies which affect the health of the users. Another social media problem is Sexual predators find, lure, stalk, and assault victims through social media. Sexting which usually involves texting sexual content is a big problem. When youths post nude photos or comments on their social pages, it can lead to child pornography which is not good for them and can result in criminal charges (Boczkowski, P., Mitchelstein, E., & Matassi, M. 2017)

Conclusion

The impacts are mostly negative and thus the need to control social media use. The paper has discussed how Social media platforms have changed how youth socialize and acquire information, and brought about a new set of issues for teachers, parents, researchers and the government to consider. Adults can help the youth figure out about the online presence in moral and ethical perspective specifically designed to assist the youths in understanding the consequences for themselves and others of participation in the socially connected world.

References

Bányai, F., Zsila, Á. Király, O., Maraz, A., Elekes, Z., Griffiths, M. D. & Demetrovics, Z. (2017). Problematic Social Media Use: Results from a Large-Scale Nationally Representative Adolescent Sample. PloS one, 12(1).

Valenzuela, S., Bachmann, I., & Aguilar, M. (2016). Socialized for News Media Use How Family Communication, Information-Processing Needs, and Gratifications Determine Adolescents’ Exposure to News. Communication Research, 0093650215623833.

Jelenchick, L. A., Hawk, S. T., & Moreno, M. A. (2016). Problematic internet use and social networking site use among Dutch adolescents. International journal of adolescent medicine and health, 28(1), 119-121.

Schou Andreassen, C., Billieux, J., Griffiths, M. D., Kuss, D. J., Demetrovics, Z., Mazzoni, E., & Pallesen, S. (2016). The relationship between addictive use of social media and video games and symptoms of psychiatric disorders: A large-scale cross-sectional study. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 30(2), 252.

Sidani, J. E., Shensa, A., Radovic, A., Miller, E., Colditz, J. B., Hoffman, B. L & Primack, B. A. (2016). Association between social media use and depression among US young adults. Depression and anxiety, 33(4), 323-331.

Boczkowski, P., Mitchelstein, E., & Matassi, M. (2017). Incidental News: How Young People Consume News on Social Media. In Proceedings of the 50th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

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