Teens and social media use: What's the impact?



The article deals with the role of the media in the life of a modern person. Describes the positive and negative media impact on young people.

Keywords: mass media, youth, positive and negative media impact.

В статье рассматривается роль СМИ в жизни современного человека. Описывается позитивное и негативное медиа-воздействие на молодых людей.

Ключевые слова: СМИ, молодежь, позитивное и негативное медиа-воздействие.

Social media is a platform for public around the World to discuss their issues and opinions. Before knowing the actual aspects of social media people must have to know what does social media mean? Social media is a term used to describe the interaction between groups or individuals in which they produce, share, and sometimes exchange ideas, images, videos and many more over the internet and in virtual communities. Children are growing up surrounded by mobile devices and interactive social networking sites such as Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook which has made the social media a vital aspect of their life. Social network is transforming the behavior in which youthful people relate with their parents, peers, as well as how they make use of technology [3, p. 82].

Social Media is a innovative idea with a very brilliant opportunity with additional scope for advancements. With the advancement of social media many organizations are making use of this medium to better their practices [2, p. 27].

People are accustomed to communicate through the resources of the Internet [1, p. 71]. If you do not abuse the use of social networks, then they have a positive impact. You can reconnect with long-lost people, view photos and videos of friends and share your own, chat in real time with those who are far away. Or meet someone from any country. This expands the circle of communication, makes it more accessible. On the Internet, a person can increase his self-esteem, find friends of interest and like-minded people, share his experience with someone, etc. But it is very important that the interests of a person are not limited to social services. Also, you can see that social networks are increasingly becoming a source of making money [4, p. 78].

So, let's look at the «pros» and «cons» of social networks. Let's start with the «pros».

1. quick search for the necessary information, communication with friends, relatives, other people located in different parts of the country and the world; the possibility of self-expression, the realization of creative potential; it is a great way to communicate not only between individuals, but also between groups;
2. reading posts of interesting, famous personalities, their commenting; coverage of issues and topics that do not affect or are hushed up by traditional media;
3. assistance in organizing their professional activities, promoting and advertising it on the Internet; on the Internet spread and receive the necessary information about class schedule, study, assignments, buy and sell something, look for work, business partners, life partners;
4. social networks are a great platform for advertising anything, because. this is a huge audience coverage;
5. before buying something, people go to the forums and read reviews about the quality of the product, this helps to avoid many troubles;
6. with the help of social networks, you can quickly collect the necessary funds f or medical care for sick people;
7. vigorous discussion in the network of acute social problems or emergencies force the media listen to them, transmit this information through their channels.

Consider some of the «cons» that carry and give rise to social networks.

1. you get very used to the networks and start to depend on them, in its own way it is a kind of drug
2. instead of work and leisure, people spend a lot of time on surfing the Internet without any benefit for yourself, it affects health — vision, nervous system, sleep; reduces efficiency and quality of work;
3. the social network is possibly a source of personal information for various intelligence agencies. We, without hesitation, post information about ourselves, as well as about relatives and friends, on networks, which can turn into trouble for them. On the some resources it is no longer possible to delete your own page (you can only close it from others), it remains in the network database;
4. networks will not replace live human communication: emoticons cannot express real emotions, sensations and moods;
5. it happens that completely different people are hiding behind «nicknames» and photos, and not always with good intentions. Networks make it possible to manipulate people, introduce far from harmless ideas into their minds; on the social networking platform it is very easy to form various groups in someone's interests;
6. social networks today are turning into a marketing tool, they satisfy the needs of advertisers and PR specialists to a greater extent than directly users; social networks are used very little for their intended purpose; often they turn into a huge dump of verbal garbage;
7. social networks cannot replace or be mass media, because they lack credibility, an objective reflection of reality/

Virtual life begins to replace the real. Why meet, go somewhere, if you can talk or see photos of all your friends without leaving your home. Many people, having once got into a social network, «get hooked on it», automatically updating their page, reading news or playing applications. It becomes difficult for such people to live in real life. Some deliberately refuse to meet with friends, saying that they are busy.

As Youth and Teens are the builder of nation, and in this era they are grown up as part of the Net Generation. They can easily use the latest technology in various forms, including smart phones, mp3 players, digital cameras, video games, iPads, electronic readers, and personal computers. Social Media has its both positive and negative effects. Virtual communication supersedes the real, becomes predominant in a person's life. In particular, this problem concerns children and adolescents. In a social network, everything is simple and faceless, I typed a message, sent it, received a response. There is no facial expressions, movement, eye contact, language of postures and gestures, no real emotions. A person, being online for a long time, communicating virtually, weaned from simple human communication, becomes dependent on a computer and the network itself.

References:

1. S.Shabnoor, S.Tajinder,Social Media its Impact with Positive and NegativeAspects IJCATR, Volume 5– Issue 2, 71–75, 2016.
2. Nagar, Himanshu, Chetna Dabas, and J. P. Gupta. «Navie Bayes and K-Means Hybrid Analysis for Extracting Extremist Tweets», ACM Conference, pp 27–32.
3. A. T. M Shahjahan, K.Chisty, «Social Media research and its effect on our society» International journal of Information 7 communication Engineering, Vol:8, No:6,2014.
4. W.Tariq, M.Mehboob, M. A. Khan, F.Ullah «The Impact of social Media and Social Networking on education and Students of Pakistan» international Journal of Computer sciences issues, Vol:9,No:3,July 2012.