Social media has played an important part in today's youth. With all the new technology being invented it is almost impossible to stay away. Social media being the hardest to stay away from. Despite social media playing a positive role for some, social media is having a negative impact of social mon youth. Youth self-esteem is lower, many teens are cyberbullied , and hyperconnection makes youth depressed.
The younger youth is exposed to social media the more anxiety and self-esteem issues youth has. With social media youth can curate their lives, showing only the best parts or moments. Self esteem issues come from other youths on social media. It is hard for kids to see how perfect someone else’s life might be. To see how much money someone has, the better clothes they wear, or the fancy places they travel. Seeing all the fancy things others have makes it hard for youths to accept all that they have. Therefore it makes their self- esteem go down. Suddenly they don’t like the clothes they wear or how they look. Some youth may feel depressed and frustrated because of how different they are online and in person, being two different people can be hard. Dr. Wick said, “If you practice being a false self eight hours a day, it gets hard to accept the less-than-perfect being you really are.”
Having the ability to share pictures and talk to anyone at anytime has almost promoted cyber bullying for youth. According to stopbullying.gov, Cyber bullying is bullying that takes place over digital devices like cell phones, computers, and tablets. Something that the youth seems to forget is that words hurt, and the things that are said and done on social media have an impact on others. Studies on http://www.bullyingstatistics.org/content/cyber-bullying-statistics.html state that over half of adolescents and teens are faced with cyberbullying, and that the same amount have engaged in cyberbullying. Many of the young people on social media do more harm than good.
Social media exposes young children to too many things they don’t understand. Social media can negatively affect young children because it allows them to see a lot of their friends or classmates lives and if a student has a bully in the classroom it’s not unlikely for them to bully online as well. Children, especially bullies, being exposed to this much freedom can negatively affect them. Social media enables many people to bully without any type of consequence.
