Before I blinked my eyes, my niece, a teen living with me, had already told me news about the war between Israel and Iran when it began initially, even when I was yet to know what was going on.
That's the power of social media on adolescents of this era. They are getting exposed to the global news as well, along with many other things out there they are being exposed to through social media.
However, I wouldn't deny that there is the need for them to be exposed to digital literacy to avoid being misinformed and suffering greatly from the negative effects of social media.
This prompt is focused on the positive and negative impacts of social media on adolescence, which mostly influence the adolescents mental health.
Obviously, the negative impacts mostly influence the adolescents mental health, but to me, I will say that the main thing lies in the usage. Social media has clear advantages and disadvantages, and so far, the mental health of adolescents today has been affected greatly mostly due to the usage. Do you allow your gadgets to control you, or do you control them instead? The mental health effect of social media can be curtailed if you choose the latter!
Our adolescents of today are so curious. They want to know how, why, and what. And then social media becomes a handy tool to quench their curiosity. Most of them are using TikTok, Instagram, and others to learn public speaking, and that's great. Some intelligent ones are exposed to skill through the same means, while some learn more about their education through the same means as well. That's on the positive side.
On the negative side, some of these teens are very addicted to social media. Their studies don't matter anymore; it's all about scrolling from one click to another, burning their precious time, and before you know it, 4 hours are gone! They see some luxury life from people and think that life is so rosy that way, not knowing that lots of fake life fills the streets of social media. What do you expect when people are looking for traffic? They would post attractive videos, or text, or images just to draw attention, whereas they are all lies. An innocent adolescent consumes all this content unfiltered and begins to feel inferior to him or herself. Comparison sets it, and if not careful, depression follows. All these affect their mental health negatively, and that's exactly what they see daily at each scroll through social media and many unthinkable things.
Let's not even forget how distracted they get just because of social media, which in turn affects their sleep quality and what they can achieve daily. I admire how this same media helps them connect with friends even across the globe and helps expose them to varieties of knowledge these days, but yet, they won't escape suffering the mental health implications if left unmonitored. And I repeat, they surely need to be informed; otherwise the negative impacts will continue to override.
I have work to do, you have work to do, and all parents and guardians have work to do if we really want to see our adolescents utilize the positive side of social media without feeling the negative impacts that much.
All images were generated using Meta AI.
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