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According to a poll cited by the American Academy of Pediatrics, 22% of teenagers log on to their favorite social media site more than 10 times each day, and more than half of them log on more than once a day. It reports 75% of teenagers own their own cell phones and 25% use them for social media and 54% use them for texting, and 24% use them for instant messaging (O'Keeffe, Clarke-Pearson & Council on Communications and Media, 2011). Adolescence has always been considered the most difficult emotional and social development phase in a person’s life. It is when adolescents and tweens discover their individual ways of interacting with others, their personal images of themselves and their opinions and feelings about the world they live in. The journey for our children has become even more challenging than ever because their social and emotional evolution is occurring while they are using social media formats such as the Internet, Face Book, Twitter, instant messaging, and texting. The explosive growth of social media, smartphones and digital devices is transforming our kids' lives, in school and at home.
The teen years are filled with mood swings and self-discovery. Children naturally have a hard time controlling their spontaneity and are susceptible to peer pressure, so we, as parents, need to make ourselves aware of the social media sites our kids are accessing in order to be able to encourage healthy use and help them steer clear of potential problems. There are both positives and negatives to adolescents and tweens developing in this new cyber world. Some benefits of utilizing these formats include; enhanced communication, social connection, and the development of technical skills. Kids are able to interact with others who share their interests and interact with friends more frequently. On the down side, young people face a whole new dimension of problems that arise from it, including; cyber bullying, “Facebook depression,” sexting, and exposure to inappropriate content that their undeveloped minds may not understand.
Identity development
The term self-socialization, when talking about the Internet, refers to the process that happens when teens develop their identities without parental supervision. A common problem is that kids are able to get away with things on the Internet because their parents have no idea how things work. Teens have even been known to control which of their activities on the Internet their parents see by hiding the sites they really use (that their parents would not approve of) and sometimes even removing the parental controls over their access. Many teens find themselves interacting in adolescent-only zones, accessing sites throughout the world (Anderson, L., & McCabe, D., 2012).
When two worlds collide
The anonymous-seeming nature of the Internet causes adolescents to be less shy, more “real” and less concerned with what others think, exploring alternate identities and using dialog and language that they would not normally, and acting in unsafe ways. Since adolescents do have to come out of their Internet worlds and function in reality, they often face value differences between the two realms. Online, it is perfectly acceptable to play around with their identities, pretend and deceive. However, these Internet norms are concerning and problematic in the offline world. Two behaviors that carryover to the offline world illustrate and justify the concern for risky or incompatible behavior are; meeting someone from the Internet offline and using the aggressive social language of the Internet in the offline world. Adolescents get wrapped up in their online personas and may unwittingly put themselves at risk and meet the people they interact with offline. These people are often predators that enter the Internet world for the express purpose of causing harm.
The adolescent years are a time of increased risky behavior, the repercussions of which often have enormous cost to the adolescent, families, and society. Though the Internet truly offers an exciting and innovative space for socialization and interacting with peers, it lacks the traditional checks and balances that previous generations experienced, mainly parental oversight (Anderson, L., & McCabe, D., 2012). Self-socialization and many of the now-acceptable behaviors and norms in this new cyber world can be considered risky and/or harmful to adolescent development. Since what is acceptable online can differ so much from the norms of the “real” world, immediate steps must be taken to ensure using various technologies is as safe as possible for our children, especially teens. Just as we united nation-wide to create a drug education program, it is now necessary to create early education programs in schools to help children and adolescents learn the positive and negative uses for technology and to aid and empower them to face the subsequent challenges and threats that are transforming their lives in school and at home.
References
Mengistu Ejigu ( Ej ) & Michelle Boone
Regis University
April 20, 2013 References
Anderson, L., & McCabe, D. (2012). A Co-constructed World: Adolescent Self-Socialization on the
Internet. Journal Of Public Policy & Marketing, 31(2), 240-253. doi:10.1509/jppm.08.043
O'Keeffe, G. S., Clarke-Pearson, K., & Council on Communications and Media, (2011). The impact of
social media on children, adolescents, and families. The official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics
4 comments:
Great blog post! As a father of a teenager with a cellphone and a Facebook account, social media scares me to death. I think the key is education. If we educate our youth they will be much more prepared when we send them out to the wolves.
Yes! Nice job, great article, this is an issue for kids, how can they be protected online is such a problem that need to be address there are solution in restricting content. However, problem again that falls on the parent shoulders what are they putting place to help kids avoid these circumstances in cyber-bullying etc. Parents needs to knowledgeable in the ever changing media world, and understand what they are exposing their child too. –Jeff–
Fantastic article. I do believe that today's parents are a little more plugged in than when I was growing up. This may have an impact on how much kids can hide from their parents. Additionally, by knowing about the tricks that I pulled while growing up, in addition to keeping up with technology, I think (read: hope) that I can stay one step ahead of my kids and keep the wool from being pulled over my eyes.
I do think that it is a parents responsiblity to do whatever it takes to keep kids safe. I'm fairly certain that there are programs and apps out there that can keep track of internet usage for these purposes.
Good information, there are a lot of problems with digital socialization for people of all ages, but you do well to point out the ways that these issues can impact teenagers more strongly. The permanency of digital actions also contrasts with the feeling of anonymity especially where photos and other media are concerned. Your personal image should be more protected and many teens find out the hard way that mistakes made on the internet can be forever.
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