Elda, Tartari (2015). Benefit and risk of children and adolescents using social media.

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Elda, Tartari. (2015). Benefit and risk of children and adolescents using social media.


Social media is quickly evolving in front of our eyes and it is almost impossible to reject and hide from this new trend. As we know, social media present risks and benefits to children while they made this a part of their daily activities. It seems like the Internet just came out of nowhere and changed everything, including everyone’ life. Not only is it an important part of socialization within peer groups but now it is used to market and motivate people to become a part of a larger community. Teens today are the first generation that cannot imagine life without the Internet and the various devices that connect us to it. Our electronic gadgets have become extensions of our blood, like crutches. It is undeniably changing the way how to communicate with others and how one finds and shares information, these powerful tools give us wings and conveniences. Most websites offer communication through the use of Facebook, Snapchat, Wechat, Weibo, Twitter, Instagram, Myspace; gaming sites and virtual worlds such as Club Penguin, Second Life, and the Sims; video sites such as YouTube and many various blog formats. With new apps for smartphone and photography and video made digital, media can be created, edited and shared quickly than ever before and once it is in this new digital, it is not yours anymore, by the way, over 63% children and adolescents own a smartphone and over 73% of children and adolescents spend more than 2 hours per day online. Through these new advance in technology, one can share things about themselves to the world to view and prior to social one would have to communicate and share what they hide from parents. We have to admit that these social media site offer children and adolescence new ways to access communication and entertainment and the long-term effects are still unknown and may be dangers. Consequently, it is imperative for parents and teachers to be more aware of this media and what it offers both good and bad for this generation.

“According to American Psychological Association (APA), 73% of wired American teens now use social networking websites (Lenhart, Purcell, Smith, & Zickuhr, 2010). Another study shows that 22 % of the teenagers log in their preferred social networks more than ten times per day, and half of the teenagers that were asked, log into this social media more than one times per day (CommonSense Media, 2009). In the last 5 years, the number of pre-teenagers and teenagers that use these pages increased dramatically. According to a report done for the benefit of the European Union (2014), 59% of 9-16-year-olds have a social networking profile including 26% aged 9-10, 49% aged 11-12, 73% aged 13-14, and 82% aged 15-16.”

On one hand, the social media affords many opportunities for entertainment, relaxing, learning, finding, enrichment, sharing and personal growth. Therefore, parents have a positive view of its use by children and adolescents. On the other hand, there are many positive aspects of social media, as they are aware of the potential risks to negative content, such as Facebook Depression, usage, pornography, violence, commercialism, health issue, cyberbullying, unsupervised social relations, and privacy and security issues.

What do teenagers benefit from using social media?

There are many ways social media can be used by youth in a positive way. Its interactive platform enables the users to communicate with other members in building the social relationship and sharing information and knowledge related to the needs and activities in the real life. To stay connected with peers they have met through school, sports team, church, party, etc. Social networking provides an alternative way to get students interested in learning, which helps on homework and group project. The network can also help shy adolescents and children have a more non-threatening way to interact with peers because they aren’t interacting face-to-face (Rosen, 2011). Via the internet, children have more opportunity to find those, who have similar hobbies and interests, they have the chance to express themselves without fear to be misunderstood or not to be understood at all. In another word, the internet provides an opportunity to connect with others and bring peers closer than ever before, without distance and time-limited. The Internet can be placed for teens to turn to for support and advice when going through challenging experience and shy to talk to the people around them. Social networking also can motivate the creative skills or capability during the participant.

Risks of using Social Media

Apart from the benefit, the negative effects on children and adolescents are also numerous. They are at risk if they access the internet under the age without their parent’s permission, the minimal age of internet access is around 13. Social media can affect the mental health of children, such as usage per day, violence, nutrition lack of exercise and obesity. Many forms of cyberbullying is also a problem and can lead to the victims experiencing depression and anxiety, it is bad enough that there are children who are victims of negative comments by peers, but many victimized by strangers as well. Television has become a leading sex educator, which exposes children to adult sexual behaviors in ways that portray these actions as normal and risk-free.

Elda Tartari made a clear statement to talk about the benefit and the risk of using social media on children and adolescents. He also finds a lot of data to support his ideas because numbers are power. Tartari uses numbers and statistics to be the powerful pieces of evidence that can effectively strengthen any argument. The weakness of this report, which Tartari didn’t throw out the point of how partners can protect their child from social media.

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