In today’s world, social media is developing day by day. Most people around the world are using social media. This is very popular among the young generation especially. Even if you look at the statistics, you will come across the same story. Social media is continuing to gain popularity every day. The impacts of social media on youth is also quite evident in different frames of our lives.
Here are some statistics that were done on social media;
- The average time spent by people per day on the social network is 1.72 hours
- For the teenagers, the numbers are much higher which is up to 27 hours per week
Social media has become a very important part of life for young generations. There are many young people who keep on engaging themselves with social media without even caring to think about what would be the impact of social media on them. The effects can sometimes be positive and sometimes be negative but mostly they are negative if it is not integrated with a business or professional goal.
Positive impacts
- It helps to keep connected to their friends when they want to see each other but they are not able to see each other.
- Social media keeps updated about the important things that are going across the world currently or in your city. A great benefit to know about everything just by the simple click of your finger.
- The youths have the perfect place to express themselves in such a way about which they won’t be allowed to do in public. This is something which makes the youth feel better about them and they hold some position in society.
- It helps you to develop social skills and the best part is that a number of friendships can begin from the social website.
- Youths generally like to make new friends and wanted to know about others as much as they can. All of that is possible with the social media platform.
- Interesting impact of social media on youth is that it feels fun to interact with peers rather than talking to them face to face.
Negative impacts
- People of today’s generation give so much importance to social media that it has become their priority. They love being on social media sites and forget about all the things that should come first for them like family, sports, and schools.
- In the platforms of social media, we can only see the virtual side of the person. It means that we can only see the side which they want to show us. Many people try to portray themselves with others which they are not at all.
- Young people have this habit of bullying their peers which is ok to some extent. But when it comes to cyberbullying, it affects a lot the other peer as this can spread easily. Sometimes such things can lead you to depression as well as suicidal thoughts.
- There are some young people who get very easily influenced. They may feel to need to change their appearance physically and compare themselves to every next person they see on social media.
- There is a very strong temptation in social media. It can become an addiction for the youth and begin to side-track them.