How is Social Media affecting the younger Generation?

Technology creates the ability to speak with individuals everywhere throughout the globe. Social media has been developing in interest for all ages and numerous individuals relate to the addictive effect it has on their mindset and well-being. This begs the question is it benefiting our generation?

Despite all the benefits of social media, there can be dangers in utilising applications like FaceTime, Instagram. The or the popular site Omegle where you can live stream, contact strangers and even talk to them! When talking to strangers you can be very vulnerable to any manipulations, this could be physical or mental. In the extreme this could lead to kidnapping, catfishing and suicidal.

Overall , the academic achievements of the future generation is proportionately affected by the utilisation of social media. This is apparently shown by the interviews we have done with both students and staff arguing with the unhealthy usage of electronics, and the effects of social media has on students in effective learning. This made more people become attentive to their accounts this can be a major distraction.

Snapchat is a big factor in the midst of this issue with teenagers making streaks with friends a popular option, this is the act of sending a photo of video to a friend every day for possibly months on end. Does Snapchat care about the money more than the effects on our generation? As indicated by the Kaiser news source in 2010, children aged 8 - 18 spend 7 hours and 38 minutes on social media. However this number has certainly expanded with the introduction of new devices and apps, for example, Snapchat and the Apple Watch.

A Snapchat streak is when you send direct pictures back and forth with a friend for days. ... Snapchat rewards longer streaks with special emojis, such as the "100" emoji for streaks lasting 100 days, or a mountain emoji for an extremely long streak.

Amanda Williams, Head of Year 8 at the St Marylebone School in London, shared her thoughts on social media, explaining that she believed streaks to be time consuming and how much it could affect our self esteem.

Another key thing she said that relates to how time consuming social media can be is that “people spend a lot of time putting on makeup just to take photo”. Does Snapchat only care about the money of our generations mindset?

Bilingual teacher, Miss Moreton, has a multitude of thoughts on how social media has had an affect on the current and future generations’ knowledge and skills. First and foremost, she questioned many students abilities to access each social media account such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat. This is evidently shown in all companies guidelines that restrict the usage of their apps from children under 13. Despite this crystal-clear rule, many students we have interviewed have had these apps since the young - ostensibly too young - ages of 10,11 and 9.

Moreton also stated that on many occasions social media was not being misused by children of our school. This may be because we are fortunate enough to have been taught the significance of using social media safely and thinking before clicking in ICT and PSHE lessons.

The abusive relationship one may have with social media may damage their future massively. Moreton spends 1 hour on social media every day and thinks that in order to have a healthy lifestyle you should not abuse the freedom so many adolescents get from using the internet.

We found the reasons for gaining followers on social media are mostly to feel you are popular. An anonymous student in particular had roughly 600 followers and said the point was, “it makes you seem more popular when you’re actually not”. She started her account on Instagram at only the age of 9 and uses it all the time.

Another student had 1000 followers in her time of using it for only 2 years, even in her short time she said she wasn't certain she could use it properly but was certain this was only a childhood thing and that she wouldn't be continuing this in the future,

Although social media can be beneficial, overall the negative impacts are too much of a responsibility for young teens to handle. What do you think we could do to better the future generation?