social media good for young children

The one common bad effect of social media is addiction " the constant checking of Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or other social media updates. Experts believe that knowing what"s going on with friends and what they are thinking or feeling can be addicting. Researchers at UCLA"s Brain Mapping Center has found that being appreciated in social media through "likes" was seen in brain scans to activate the reward centers of the brain. This reward circuitry is particularly sensitive during adolescence, and this may partly explain why teenagers are more into social media. For kids and teens, knowing how many people like what they posted, how many followed (or unfollowed) them, and knowing what people say about them also leads to compulsive checking. This addiction to social media could disrupt other worthwhile activities like concentrating on schoolwork, reading or engaging in sports. The heaviest social media users admit to checking their social media feeds more than 100 times a day, sometimes even during school. Bad effects of social networking to kids and teens, according to psychologists or suggested by scientific studies, are as follows: A 2015 U.K. Office for National Statistics finds that children who spend more than 3 hours each school day on social media sites are more than twice as likely to suffer poor mental health. Their immersion in a virtual world may cause these children to experience delay in their emotional and social development. According to the report, social media are potentially "a source of social comparison, cyber bullying and isolation", which could lead to mental health problems. A report published by IZA Institute of Labor Economics even suggests that just one hour a day on social media can make a teen miserable. The study also theorized that this may be caused by issues of cyberbullying, an increase in social comparisons, and a decrease in real-life, face-to-face activities. Another 2015 study by the British Psychological Society finds that teenagers being obligated to be responsive to social media (liking posts, answering texts and direct messages) throughout the day affect their mental health. A University of Michigan study seem to indicate that in young adults, Facebook use leads to decline in subjective well-being. The more young adults use Facebook, the worse they feel moment-to-moment and the less they feel satisfied with their lives overall. DoSometing.org, "one of the largest organizations for young people and social change", lists several bad effects of social media, which includes sleep disorder, depression, addiction, 24/7 stress, isolation, insecurity, and fear of missing out (FOMO). FOMO or the fear of missing out on something important (like their friends" jokes, parties, activities and other ways of having fun) leads to depression and anxiety in teen social media users, according to a survey done by the Australian Psychological Society. FOMO is one of the main reasons for teenagers" heavy use of social media. Screen relationships detract from spending time in real life relationships and developing social skills. According to Patricia Greenfield, professor of psychology in the UCLA College, the implications of her research is that when people use digital media for social interaction, they"re spending less time developing social skills and learning to read nonverbal cues. "Social interaction is needed to develop skills in understanding the emotions of other people." The results of a survey from the University of Glasgow shows that social media use particularly at night, with strong emotional involvement, led to poorer sleep quality, lower self-esteem, and higher levels of anxiety. This can be a problem since teens with low self-esteem grow up as depressed adults, according to previous studies. Social networks are fertile grounds for bad influencers and anonymous venoms and hunting grounds for deviants and other predators. For kids who crave attention, Facebook and other social network becomes a venue for them to act out. These kids may make inappropriate statements, pictures and videos that could ultimately harm them. Also, posts and materials that are published online tend to be permanent and may haunt them in the future. A study by Larry Rosen, a professor of psychology at California State University concludes that extended use of social networks like Facebook can result in a decrease in empathy among teens, and thus an increase in narcissism. Young people who have a history of harming themselves or attempting suicide might be particularly vulnerable to negative messages posted online, new research shows. The new review, published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE, found that kids and young adults who have thoughts of self-harm or suicide actually spend more time on the Internet and are more often victims of cyberbullying than their peers who do not have such thoughts. Some kids realize that spending a lot of time in social media results in wasted time, and this negatively affects their mood Selfies, which became popular with the rise of camera phones, can trigger mental health conditions when a person becomes obsessed with looks. The Mirror, for example, recently featured a selfie addict who tried to kill himself when he couldn"t take a perfect photo. According to Pamela Rutledge in Psychology Today, "Preoccupation with selfies can be a visible indicator of a young person with a lack of confidence or sense of self that might make him or her a victim of other problems as well. Excessive and increasingly provocative selfie-ing is a form of "acting out," a common behavioral pattern to get attention." Educators also note that for kids and teens in social networks, there are no spelling and grammar rules. In fact it is cool to misspell and not make sense. Less sophisticated children will find it hard to differentiate between social networking communication and real world communication. In fact many teachers are complaining that social networking communication with misspellings and lack of grammar are seeping through student"s school writings. Social media habits are also blamed for lack of sleep and sleep problems in teenagers. Bright light emitted from smart phones and tablets are thought to disrupt sleep cycles. For young people sleep is important for learning, the development of the young brain, as well as for growing and staying healthy. Baroness Susan Greenfield , a top neuroscientist of the Oxford University warns about the lifelong effects of too much social networking: Facebook and other networking sites "are infantilizing the brain into the state of small children who are attracted by buzzing noises and bright lights, who have a short attention span and live for the moment". There is hardly any concentration skills required in participating in these social networking sites, and these train the brain to have poor attention span. Kids are detracted from learning to communicate in the real world. There are reports from teachers that social networking is affecting kids" comprehension levels. Also, if kids communicate primarily through the screen they do not learn the subtleties of real life communication " such as body language, tone of voice, and subconsciously sensing the molecules that other people release. Social networking sites make kids more self-centered. Since Facebook and other sites give kids their own page which is about them, it leads some vulnerable kids to think that everything revolves around them, a precursor for emotional problems in their later life. This might also result in inability to empathize. These sites make kids prone to sensationalism. Thank you for reading my argument, please consider it.