Did you know that the average person spends four years of their life looking down at a cell phone. Four years that will never be returned, but at least it's done for good reasoning right? Wrong. It's ironic how these touch screens are capable of making us lose touch and lose connections. Its the twenty first century, 9 in 10 teens have a cell phone, access to the internet is easier than ever before, but social media has the power to must us more separate and selfish than ever. Although social media claims to connect us, the connection has gotten no better, although we have big friend lists, so many of teenagers suffer from loneliness, isolation and depression as our face to face friendships are more broken than the screens on our phone. We …show more content…
With naive teens constantly being bombarded with anorexic, flawless figures, social pressures result in a distorted mental perception of what they should look like as they begin to constantly compare themselves to unrealistic images resulting in disastrous consequences as they feel inadequate about their own self image which may lead to cutting, drug and alcohol use, sexual addictions and bullying . Body shamers use social media as a platform to talk negatively about others, which strongly affects the emotional wellbeing of individuals who already struggle with their relationship with …show more content…
The line between formal and informal writing is becoming blurred as they are constantly surrounded by abbreviations and acronyms. Moreover, many teens spend sleepless nights on social media which can lead to lower academic performance due to a decreased concentration span. The use of cellphones for social reasons during class and “multitasking” has become a major distraction in the classroom as the effects of Facebook of teens highlights that frequent use will lead to lower grades. We have officially been labelled as the “dumbest generation” by author Mark Bauerlein, due to our excessive use of social
In today’s modern culture, almost all forms of popular media play a significant role in bombarding young people, particularly young females, with what happens to be society’s idea of the “ideal body”. This ideal is displayed all throughout different media platforms such as magazine adds, television and social media – the idea of feminine beauty being strictly a flawless thin model. The images the media displays send a distinct message that in order to be beautiful you must look a certain way. This ideal creates and puts pressure on the young female population viewing these images to attempt and be obsessed with obtaining this “ideal body”. In the process of doing so this unrealistic image causes body dissatisfaction, lack of self-confidence
In her essay “Does Texting Affect Writing?” Michaela Cullington addresses the issue of text messaging possibly causing poor communication skills and the use of textspeak, abbreviations used during text messaging such as “LOL” and “g2g,” in students’ formal writing. Cullington argues that “texting actually has a minimal effect on student writing” (pg. 367). She addresses the opposition directly, even citing credible sources. However, she also cites credible sources with better information to support her point, and even conducts an experiment of her own.
According to a survey done by Jesse Fox, Ph.D., 80% of women feel bad about themselves just by looking in the mirror (Dreisbach). This has happened because of social media being changed to make girls feel like they need to have a certain body shape. Models and celebrities in magazines and media show unrealistic beauty and it contributes to eating disorders, depression, anxiety, and much more (Seventeen magazine). Media has put lots of stress on women throughout history with changing body shapes. A survey done by Dove found results that 9 out of 10 women want to change at least one aspect of their physical appearance.
Social media plays a big role in how society portrays body image. “Alternatively, an increased number of Facebook friends may provide girls with greater opportunity to rapidly make multiple social comparisons, itself shown to be associated with body image concern”(Tiggemann and Slater 82). According to the survey that was taken by Marika Tiggemann and Amy Slater, the more Facebook friends the girls had, the more likely it was that they had body image concerns. They were able to compare themselves to the other girls that they were friends with, which led to them to have an increase in their drive for thinness. “Further, these comparisons are likely to be with somewhat idealised images, in that girls mostly post photographs in which they look good or are doing something ‘cool’ (and can be digitally altered)”(Tiggemann and Slater 82).
the Problem It is clear that the growing generation is addicted to social media and their technology. 22 % of the teenagers log into their preferred social networks more than ten times per day (Elda Tartari, 2014). Technology is becoming the main way of communication for teens and this may be affecting the way they communicate outside of the Internet. A study found that teens use instant messaging in particular as a substitute for face-to-face talk with
Social media makes teenagehood harder by creating a stereotype of what a perfect body should look like, celebrating extremely thin, unhealthy
As previously stated, social media helps kids stay connected with friends and family from different parts of the world because “Online communication is particularly cost-effective and easy to use, allowing adolescents the opportunity to initiate, build, and maintain relationships with family, peers, and even strangers across varying distances” (Anthony, LeCory, and Williams, 494). Even though online communication is keeping people connected, the use of technology at a young age has an impact on adolescents’ personal development. The friendships, children have on social media might not be as meaningful as they seem. The article, Trends in Adolescent Development Impacting Practice: How Can We Catch Up, states that “[…], youth are unlikely to virtually “disconnect” from their peers when they are alone, instead choosing relief from momentary feelings of loneliness or unhappiness over a period of renewal and self-reflection” (Anthony, LeCory, and Williams, 493), this indicates that adolescents do not know how to deal with their emotions.
Social media is a powerful source in today’s society, 81% of the population in the United States alone has set up a social media profile. Many use the media for useful things, like educational opportunities and business inquiries. Although there are people who may look at it more in a concerning aspect. Many people today view the social media as a stage where they are judged and told what the real way to look and act is, more specifically, body image. Social Media has a negative impact on body image, through creating a perfect view physically which affects someone mentally, targeting both male and female, and turning away from the real goal of social media.
For example, girls will style their hair to “become more attractive” (Berger 2014), or they will purchase ‘minimizer,’ ‘maximizer,’ ‘training,’ or ‘shaping’ bras, hoping that their breasts will conform to their idealized body image” (Berger 2014). This all appears to be harmless activities, yet when body image is only addressed outwardly and not psychologically, there can be an increase in poor and destructive behaviors. For instance, body image dissatisfaction can lead to poor self-esteem, which can create a cycle of increased body dissatisfaction, followed by decreasing self-esteem (Stapleton et al., 2017). Ultimately, a teenage girl can find herself in a cycle of “depression, eating disorders and obesity” (Stapleton et al., 2017). On study in 2012 revealed, “Two-thirds of U.S. high school girls are trying to lose weight, even though only one-fourth are actually overweight or obese” (Berger 2014).
Body shaming is one of the biggest problems in today’s generation. It is the practice of making critical, potentially humiliating comments about a person’s body, size or weight. It is obvious that all of us come in different shapes and sizes but society and the media puts a lot of pressure on us with beauty stereotypes and standards to deem some as healthy and some not. Recently, there has been a lot of controversy recently about body image and body shaming, especially among teenagers. Body shaming is an extremely personal concept and can take a negative toll on a person.
In today’s day and age, there are a variety of apps dedicated to looking at, evaluating, and commenting on other’s bodies. The growth of social media has caused widespread body shaming, leading women and men alike to cast their self-morals aside, and bully others for
Many people, especially young people, have been consumed with the use of social networking. Nobody can take their eyes off of their phones, and that has resulted in real relationship connections withering. When a family is eating together or watching a movie in the living room to have some family bonding time, children lose attention and instead focus more on what 's going on in social media. When people hang out with their friends, they are still consumed with their phones even though
Imagine that 20 years ago the only way to stay in touch with a person was to mail a letter. In a modern world with the invention of social media, people can converse with someone using the internet and get a response within seconds. Although in the course of time all generations have started to take advantage of the novations that social media has brought about, teenagers and young adults are the most active users of these networks. According to numerous research studies in the area of online social networks, it has been shown that such sites are impacting the lives of the youth significantly. Understandably, there are a lot of different opinions about its positive and negative influence.
According to Canneil University’s (Steven Strogatz, 2005), “Social media sites can make it more difficult for us to distinguish between the meaningful relationships we foster in the real world, and the numerous casual relationships formed through social media”. When the young people prioritise these less than meaningful relationships, the more important connections like parents-children and sisters-brothers relationship will weaken because the less they communicate with each other, the higher the risk for the meaningful relationship to be damaged. They also score low in schools because of the distractions like video games, watching videos, and chatting with known and unknown person in social media sites. People never realise that all of these kind of distractions are actually the distractions that they created themselves. Young people may cause their future to be beaten by their own current attitude because ‘how’ they think now is ‘how’ they are going to be in the
People also stay connected and interact with one another, with their peers, people of similar interests, and even their family members. This helps strengthen their relationship even if they are busy with their daily routines. In addition, social media sites have become a platform for youth with similar interest or common discipline to get together, building connections and opportunities for their respective careers. Youth claims that social media not only makes their lives easier and efficient, it has become their lifestyle. While social media has seems to bring people together and help one another stay connected, it has created social isolation in regards to BBC News report.