Introduction

Sophocles once said, “Nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse”. Though the wording is a bit far-fetched, the truth of this phrase is no joke. Mankind has never physically known anything as vast as captivating, time-wasting, and addicting, as social media. Though social media is quite beneficial, it’s also dangerous. So what do we do? In this report, I’m going to go through the pros and cons of social media and attempt to communicate why I believe that the best way to mitigate the negative effects of social media in young people’s lives is to educate them about the dangers of this digital world and how we can avoid them. Also, shout out to my expert, the kind lady I talked to on the other end of the Netsafe helpline, who provided me with some good information.

What is social media?

Social media is a variety of websites and applications. Their general purpose is to connect people. The name social media refers to a means of interaction among people in which they share, create, and or exchange information in virtual communities and networks. What is considered to be the oldest social media site is called, “Six Degrees”, launching in 1997. Now social media platforms are coming out from every which way, although the most popular in New Zealand are, Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, Linkedin, Snapchat and more. Social networks (social media platforms) are a great place for many things. They allow people to do many things at the touch of a button. For example, if you were interested in cats you could create a group on social media where anyone can join and chat about cats and send pictures and videos of their cats. Or you could make a sever about farming in nz and send dates and info about the farming protests and why people need to take action so that people would come. 

Negative Effects of social media

Sadly, social media has a lot of downsides. In this paragraph, I will focus mainly on a few I have been studying. Cyberbullying is a form of bullying enabled by social media, in which teenagers are made fun of and bullied online. This happens for a variety of reasons and is encouraged due to the anonymity of social media, it can lead to depression, self dought, and the worse case scenario, suicide. In New Zealand, cyberbullying is most common on youtube, Identity theft is another common effect of social media, which is when someone steals your personal information to pretend to be you. They may do this in order to steal money from your account, to incriminate you, or just so that no one knows they did it. A massive problem in social media is exposure to inappropriate content. This is when young people aged around 5-15 are on social media and come across inappropriate content, for example, a child might come across a meme featuring sexual themes, or pornography. This is a huge problem that is caused by algorithms on certain social media sites which associate what a child is watching with something a fifty year old might be watching and think that they enjoy similar things so the kid might enjoy the pornographic meme that the fifty year old had been watching and put the meme up for the child. Oversharing is when a person, usually shares a great amount of personal information on social media. A lot of this info should be private but the kid, not knowing any better, shares it. This by itself is bad, but it gets worse when a pedofphile or a dangerous person gets wind of this and begins a conversation with the child. As seen above, social media is an easy way for dangerous people like a 30 year old posing as a 10 year old to get in contact with a 9 year old. These are some of the problems that I have been studying.

Numerical data

You can see from the graph that youtube is the most popular social media service in NZ. Through this, we can infer that Kiwis love their videos and shorts. Although youtube doesn’t seem like a social media site it is due to the comment section. Youtube has no age restrictions which means that children much too young have their own youtube accounts, and when some awful person starts to bully them for some reason, no one will be there to stop them. Though the child could block them, another person might want to be popular or cool and finish what the old bully started, and whether or not this happens the bully could create another account. Sadly this reality is true and, due to youtube being the most common social media platform in nz for cyberbullying, if kids don’t talk to their parents about it, they could be in real danger. Facebook is another problematic site at second. These problems are identical to the ones kids could face in another app in some other way. Summing the paragraph up, this graph and numerical data combined explicitly show the severity of cyberbullying in new zealand, as well as the potential danger of any social media issue.

Solutions

For every problem there is a solution, and for every solution, there is a problem. In this case, the problem of this inquiry is the negative effects of social media. There are a variety of solutions that could answer my question but, when I weigh them up, I realized that there are only three contenders. The first is limiting screen time. Parents limiting their kid’s screen time will help reduce the chance of these negative effects, to a good extent but, more could be done. Another solution is, “social responsibility”, if you catch my drift. This drift would be, social media companies taking responsibility for the kids on social media. For example, they could delete the accounts of cyber bullies, or check that people aren’t faking their age. The last solution is education. This is Parents and teachers educating and teaching their children and students the dangers of the digital world. 

Conclusion

In conclusion, when you use something, you need to understand its purpose and capabilities, social media is an amazing tool but, its negative effects are massive and need to be mitigated. After reviewing my inquiry, I have concluded that the best way to mitigate the negative effects of social media in young people’s lives is to educate them on the dangers of the digital world and how we can avoid them. Though this may be the answer, it’s not only the job of parents and teachers to educate young people about this, you can too. With the information you have picked up from this report, you now know more than others around you do, so use this information in your everyday life to benefit the world around you, and be an internet-surfing lifesaver.

Bibliography

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