Influence of social media – Term Paper

Youths and social media in modern life

Advancement in technology has resulted in access to the internet by a big number youths in the world. As a result of technology, social media has become a key platform for communication and connectivity to the teenagers. According to reports, about 75 percent of American youths own social accounts. a big number of the account subscribers depend on them for communication while a small percentage of them use the social media for research and development. Social media has a huge influence on the teenagers because they are vulnerable and possess little knowledge about what is wrong and right. Social networks have both positive and negative influence on the youths (McGillivray, 2015).
First, good for education. Presently, research in learning institutions has been eased by the presence of social media such as Facebook and Twitter, the learners are able to access information and innovate technologies. Social media has made it easy for the students to write assignments in the absence of the instructors and gain the required knowledge to allow them to face the final exams. Second, communication. Presently, social networks have become the official sites for both the official and private communication. The students are able to share vital information with the teachers, ask questions and seek clarifications where necessary. All schools currently own an official social media site either on Facebook or twitter which acts as a link between the institutions and the learners. Third, learning resource. According to reports, youths depend on the social sites when it comes to discussing the assignment and seeking for clarifications from the friends. Most user accounts are Facebook and WhatsApp which are easy to manage and have a huge subscription. Currently, Facebook is the number one social media with one billion subscribers followed by Twitter with over 700 million users.
Moving forth, cheating in exams. According to reports, youths especially the learnesr depend on the social media during exam period for answers. According to a research, huge number of youths in the world own more than one smartphone which they smuggle into exam rooms and use it to access answers online. As a result, currently, the menace has over seen a tremendous reduction in the performance of the schools, the condition has attracted discussions on media especially by the authorities concerned with the education sector. Second, cyber bullying. This is negative aspect of the social media, nowadays, youths misuse the social sites to threaten colleagues electronically. According to reports, cults use their accounts to manipulate and threaten people including politicians by demanding monetary values from them. Social media is a good platform but its users misuse it especially those who bully friends (McGillivray, 2015). Currently, there has been an increase in the level of cyber bullying especially in the developed countries where access to internet and smartphones is never a challenge. Mainstream media has been on the frontline in highlighting the menace but the concerned authorities of the government have not yet taken a mechanism of eradicating cyber bullying. Many people have lost valuables to fraudsters who own several accounts for bullying the public.

Reference
McGillivray, N. (October 12, 2015). What Are The Effects Of Social Media On Youth? Retrieved From Turbo Future Https://Turbofuture.Com/Internet/Effects-Of-Social-Media-On-Our-Youth

Benefits of using social media

Social media is used by the youth for different needs such as education, whereby they refer every item on these platforms, inter-student engagement, and achievement. Generally, Social Networking sites are more of a disadvantage in contrast to advantages if we were to hypothetically analyze both sides of the coin. The youth are also highly subjected to fields of entertainment rather than informative sources; quick analysis of any youth students in a given class will use social media as a distraction from the main course they are been taught. Youth Participation becomes opaque in social gatherings due to overuse of social sites as such their self-oratory skills deteriorate with time as they nurture their online communication skills. Today, it is not a wonder to find youth fumbling when giving a speech to a small audience say, five people, it could even be their peers yet they have fluent wordings and vocabulary when on social media since they are not been watched by anyone. Social media, therefore, is not an adequate replacement for facial communication due to lack of tonation and non-verbal cues.
Surfing social media sites are more breathe taking and involving compared to other activities done by the youth. They are, therefore, compelled to overlook other important social activities in their lifestyles. The validity of these platforms has not been clearly verified since the kind of information acquired by the youth from these sites has a higher part of its subjection towards entertainment and updates from family and friends than helpful job-related information.
Social media has in one way or the other improved significantly the quality of collaboration among youths, thereby increasing productivity. Through using social media, the youth are also able to create and strengthen connections and important leads to job opportunities and business leads. This enables them to grow and develop careers. The continuous use of social media platforms by creating and editing profiles, portfolios, personal websites capitalizes on enhancing the young person’s skills in design and layout at a tender age. These skills are fundamental in job arena and hence the youth have an added advantage. The major contribution of social media is the beauty to get instant feedback on critical issues which the youth need direly on counseling, grade marking and career development.
The negative impacts have proven to outweigh the positive when it comes to using social media in the life of a youth especially since only they can determine and regulate their own usage of these networking sites. Youth students who continually multi-task by checking social media sites while studying has reduced ability on concentration as well as poor academic grades.The youth, therefore, set their own boundaries and limits as to how and when to use social media irrespective of the positive and negative effects it imparts. The youth today is a techno-guru and socially conscious. Most youths do not evaluate keenly the information they post online, which might even if not immediately sequence negatively and incriminate their lives later. Most are also heightened victims of hacking and photoshopped images. In the same vein, the speed at which information is posted online and the tendency to overlook spelling and grammar falls close when the same youth are bound to write essays without an electronic’s aid of auto-correct feature.