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Ria Mahajan
Professor Malcolm Campbell
English 1103
October 23, 2016
The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly Effects of Social Media
Itss a typical evening. After a long day at school, teenagers slouch on the couch and flip
open their laptop to spend a lot of time surfing through the internet or finishing up uncompleted
work from school. In this new technology filled world that we live in today, the rise in social
media websites is not surprising. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are just a few of the sites that
help keep us in contact with our loved ones and friends. Social media has its upsides but in teens
it appears that the trend seems to be taking a turn for the worst. There have been encounters in
which technology has harmed students lives and normal interaction, shown through a decline in
school performance, face to face communication, and self-esteem. Although there have been few
inventions to limit time spent on electronics, students continue to spend an exhausting amount of
time on social media. The excessive use of social media sites in teens can have a negative effect
on teenagers' physical and psychological health.
Social media refers to any form of electronic communication through which people create
online communities to share information, ideas, or personal messages. It was first introduced to
the world through newspapers beginning effectively in the 1700s and has continued to grow and
be a part of everyday life through television, radios, tablets, phones, and computers.
Communication delivered through these objects influence people widely and has grown to be a
part of everyday life and decisions. However, the newfound love for mobile devices with usage

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exceeding an hour a day, brought the overall average time spent on major media to 693 minutes
per day reported Loftus who is a study author at the research firm eMarketer. This amounts to
over 12 hours of media time in one day which is also close to half of a day, outlining that social
media is used throughout the day and overused.
Scan around a restaurant and one will be surprised to find how many teens have their
heads down using their cell phones to text, Tweet, or update their Facebook statuses. Because of
the addictive quality, very few teenagers take substantial breaks from technology. According to
Professor Bennett from Brigham Young University, Too much time on the internet can cause
children to disengage from the society. It was predicted in 2015, by researchers from Science
Daily, that Americans would consume media for more than 1.7 trillion hours, an average of
approximately 15.5 hours per person per day. Teenagers are losing their ability to cope in the
social world because of their failure to remove their attention from their phones, tablets, and
television. The amount of time spent on social media is overwhelming and the disruption it
causes is an obvious result that is seen throughout face to face interaction.
There are many opportunities for families to coincide their family life with their media
life such as family that reside in other states or countries. Certain social media websites have
allowed for communication to go long distances which has a positive influence on interactions.
Skype, for example, has proven there are some advantages to social media to communicate
overseas, but, the communication devices peel away a strong hold on surrounding and immediate
family. These findings open peoples eyes to the emphasis on the lack of communication within
families because of the massive time consumed communicating online rather than in households.
Family time therefore gets cut back once again to little or no time at all.

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Time spent on social media has prohibited family time for discussions and interactions.
Few found that 63% of all teens say exchange text messages every day with people in their lives,
including their parents. Rather than face to face visits or talking on the phone the majority choice
is to click away at a screen. Through the incredible invention of cell phones, almost every
teenager has excused the choice of having a nice conversation around the dinner table to trade for
a quick text message demanding dinner be brought to their room.
Many believe that social media has been thought to bring families closer by allotting
more time to socialize and interact through certain apps and gadgets on tablets and computers.
Based on the findings done by Barna from the University of California, Los Angeles, social
media has helped to shorten the amount of time needed to work because of easy communication
amongst peers. Teenagers can now complete work more easily because of the efficiency of the
technology they own. Although the workload is cut down, many teenagers still bring home
massive amounts of work to complete which is once more completed by using the internet and
other devices. Due to the work being completed at home, socialization is disregarded and
therefore breaks interaction once more. Media has heavily impacted interaction with others even
in work situations and there needs to be a median set to balance interaction and work out.
Not only does social media hurt the interaction between two individuals, it also harms the
way the brain develops. According to Dr. Erik Fransn, professor of computer science at
Sweden's KTH Royal Institute of Technology, even a rather typical session of social media
browsing can lead to information overload and make it harder to store away information in your
memory. Staying online for long periods of time leaves the brain with less time for
"housekeeping" and results in the brain not being able to clear the information clutter. When
teenagers are on a social media website, such as Facebook, they are making it harder to keep the

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things that are online in their brain. In fact, when teens try to process sensory information like
speech or video, they are going to need partly the same system of working memory. This reduces
the working memory capacity and when teenagers try to store multiple bits of information, they
get less good at processing information. Also, a study done in Stanford University found that
brains of teenagers who are constantly overwhelmed with several streams of electronic
information, from instant messaging to blogs, find it difficult to pay attention and switch from
one job to another efficiently. Dr. Anthony Wagner, Psychology professor at Stanford, found that
when teens are in situations where there are multiple sources of information coming from the
external world or emerging out of memory, they're not able to filter out what's not relevant to
their current goal. The failure to filter this information means the individual is slowed down by
irrelevant information causing slow reaction times to decisions.
While social media may make it easier to connect with others, constantly viewing images
of others' vacation photos, personal achievements, and progress throughout the years can trigger
strong feelings of happiness, jealousy, even sadness. Researchers have even described the
phenomenon as "Facebook depression". Facebook depression, according to the American
Academy of Pediatrics reports, may result if, for example, young users see status updates, wall
posts, and photos that make them feel unpopular. Social media sites may have greater
psychosocial impact on teens with low self-esteem or who are already otherwise troubled. Media
Release, a student at Pennsylvania State University, conducted a study which looked into the
association between a persons self-esteem and how much time he or she spent on maintaining
his or her profile, specifically what actions they performed to create their online persona. Those
with lower self-esteem cared more about what others had posted about them on Facebook and
were more likely to remove certain posts to ensure their profile remained a reflection of the

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image they wanted to portray. Conversely, those with high self-esteem spend time creating their
own profile, adding pictures and information about themselves to show the world their ultimate
persona.
Lastly, social media also poses many threats in todays society. It is accessible from any
computer, phone, tablet, or IPod with an internet connection. This means that it is easier for
children as young as 8 or 9 to connect to a social media site. This in turn exposes them to nudity,
swearing, and even worse; pedophiles and rapists. Rheana Murray of New York Daily News
stated one in ten profiles are fake. This means that at least 10% or more of a childs friend on
Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter could be pretending to be someone else. The Carly Ryan
Incident that happened in 2006 proves that the internet is a very dangerous platform for
teenagers. In 2006 Carly Ryan thought she had met her dream boyfriend online. His name was
Brandon Kane, an 18-year-old musician from Melbourne. Brandon was in fact fictitious and was
a guy named Gary Francis Newman who was a 50-year-old predator and pedophile. Carly fell in
love with Brandon during 18 months of online contact and phone calls and agreed to meet up
with him. There, Gary Newman bashed her, pushed her face into the sand which suffocated her,
and then then threw her into the water to drown. Social media faces todays teenagers with
countless dangers and should be used carefully and decisively.
Social media has quickly worked its way into the lives of teenagers to expand and change
the ways of living. It can be a great tool for keeping in touch with people but not everyone uses it
that way. Social media should be used temporarily to advance relations within homes to keep
alive a healthy communication pattern, increase brain activity, and create a safe environment for
everyone to share what they want. By raising awareness of these harmful effects, teens should
take a step back from social media and realize how much control it has over them.

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