Watch out!

The previous posts discussed the possibilities of harmful effects that can occur as a result of social media usage.  These effects are certainly not experienced by everyone, but it is still important to be aware of them so that teenagers do not abuse these sites and experience these negative effects themselves. This post, however will discuss something that effects everyone who has a profile on any form of social media, and will give tips on how to avoid getting yourself trapped in this dark hole.  

Thirteen is a very big age for most kids.  They finally enter the beginning of their teenage years, feel like they are growing up....

And are able to sign up for Facebook!

Facebook requires a minimum age of thirteen for users.  If kids do happen to sign up at this young of an age, think about how many pictures and postings they acquire throughout their teenage lives.  By the time they are 18 years old, and applying to colleges, they have accumulated five years of information documenting their lives all within one page.

In a survey of admissions officers from top colleges, it was found that about 26% of universities visit social networking sites to learn more about the applicants.  These sites include google, Facebook, twitter, and so on.

Would you want your top college looking through your Facebook page or twitter feed? One bad picture or tweet that may mean nothing to you could affect your chances of getting into a school.  It is strongly suggested that teenagers clean up their profiles to make them more professional and avoid any misbehavior that could be taken the wrong way such as alcohol use, and other inappropriate behaviors.

Even though privacy settings are an option, it is still important to make sure that there is nothing on your social media pages that can come off the wrong way.  Many different situations can occur that applicants are completely unaware of.  Since many teens are friends with thousands of people that they may not even know, it is possible for anyone to get access to private profiles.

This year at Choate, a jealous friend sent a facebook link to the admissions office in attempt to sabotage an application.  There is no guarantee that this type of situation will not happen, so it is important for teenagers to make sure that their profiles portray them in a professional way that will help them rather than hurt them.

ABC News suggests 7 easy steps to help teens clean up their profiles:

1. Keep a clean account free of inappropriate postings and pictures from the minute you set up your account.
2. Know what your friends are posting, as well, and make sure they aren't posting inappropriate pictures or videos of you.
3. Tighten privacy settings so that only your friends can see posts.    
4. Google yourself so you know what is out there. Even though you set your privacy settings on social media, search engines can work around those filters.     
5. Remember to go through old postings, too. College admissions people often look all the way back to when you first joined social media.      
6. Check your social media pages about once a week.     
7. Rule of thumb: If you don't want your parents to see it, take it off.

After working so hard throughout high school, it is a shame for a picture or a tweet to be a deciding factor of whether or not kids get in to the college that they want, so it is extremely important to spread awareness, and filter through your profiles.  Social media sites are clearly a major part of almost every teenagers life, so it is essential that they are used in the right ways. 

Just remember that whatever you post or your friends post is open to the world, so make sure to use caution, and be proud of what is displayed under your name.

Social Media Usage and Mental Health

40 hours a week.

6 hours a day.

That's a lot of time isn't it?  That is an entire school day, could be an entire work day as well.  Nope... believe it or not, these numbers represent the average amount of time teenagers spent on social media sites.

What could teenagers possibly be doing on these sites for this many hours a day?  Whether its scrolling through twitter feeds, Facebook pages, or instagram pictures, teenagers lives are consumed around worrying about the lives of their "friends".  As you can imagine this can not be good by any means for the self esteem, mental health, and psychological well-being of these kids.

As a matter of fact, longer amounts of time spent on the internet has been directly linked to increased loneliness, and smaller social circles.  People are replacing communication with their family members, and friends around them, and using the internet instead The use of these social media sites isolates teens from their friends and family, negatively affecting their psychological well being.

Increased social media use is making teens become more anti social with their surrounding peers, as a vast majority of their focus is directed towards these sites. The amount of time teens spend each day, whether it’s comparing themselves to others on Facebook, or looking at other people’s tweets, is harmful to their self-esteem. Teens who are constantly communicating with people on the internet actually create “weaker ties” with those online, in comparison to “stronger offline ties” with family and friends.  They are loosing the ability to connect on a physical level with those around them. 

Teenagers who’s lives are centered around the use of social media even report themselves being “less content” and even say that they are more prone to “getting in trouble a lot, are often sad or unhappy, and are often bored” The unhappiness that some people experience can unfortunately be taken to a whole new level for some teens.

Think about it.  If you have a facebook or some other form of social media, have you ever been scrolling through other people's profiles and felt a little bit of jealousy at some point? Maybe you see that other people are having more fun than you are, or that maybe you weren't invited to your friends birthday party, and happened to see a picture.  Teens that use these sites to lurk at other people’s lives often feel even worse about themselves, constantly being reminded of how much fun other people are having, creating jealously and low self esteem.  Some teenagers take this very harshly, and unfortunately develop severe mental health effects.

Not only do these sites cause hurt feelings, jealousy, and self-comparison, but for some teens, it’s a lot more serious than that. 

800,000 teenagers on Facebook have been bullied or harrassed, 15% just in the previous year.  Cyber bullying has been shown to cause extremely high levels of depression, in some cases even higher than bullying off of the internet. 

Percentages of different types of Cyberbullying experienced in a study at a southern school district.

Who knew that innocent teenagers scrolling through their social media sites could lead to such serious cases of depression, and psychological damage.  It has also been connected to many severe cases, connected to youth suicide attempts after reading hurtful comments on the internet.

Whether you know someone who has experienced these negative effects or not, it is important to always be aware, and keep an eye out for any type of harassment.

You never know, you could potentially save a life.

Facebook "Friends"

Many teenagers have thousands of Facebook friends. How 

Many of these people are actually your friends though? 

(Image citation)

When you think of social media, the first thing that probably comes to mind is interacting with friends or peers.  One of the main purposes of having a Facebook is to be able to stay connected with friends through pictures, and messaging.  It is a great way to keep long distance relationships, and keep in touch with old friends who have moved away, or gone off to college.  

Are long distance friendships really friendships though? 

Think about how many friends you actually have.  If you had to write a list of all of the friends you know you can count on how long would it be? The average number of Facebook friends a person has is 190, however very few people actually have that many real friends.  In fact 31% of social network users have friends that they have never even personally met!

This graph displays the average number of friends

a Facebook user has.  (Graph citation)

Experts worry that spending too much time online keeps us from living our real lives. "It's great to have a lot of Facebook friends, but how many of those will friends will show when you're really in trouble?" asks Michael J Bugeja. 

Even though people might use the internet to keep in touch with friends who they cannot physically see anymore, after a while are they real friends?  People can change, and these changes can be hidden through the screen of a computer.  Although social media sites are a way that many people keep relationships over distance, these relationships can lead to a fake sense of closeness after some time.

For some teens, it seems as if facebook is a big competition of who can have the most friends.

A 16-year-old student was interviewed from Chicago high school about the issue, and said that "It's like a big popularity contest — who can get the most friend requests" 

Teens that are a part of social media sites such as MySpace or Facebook tend to have thousands of friends to try to keep up with the competition of who can have the most “friends.” But the question is: are these people really your friends? Many teens tend to accept friend requests regardless if they know the person or not, just to add more friends.  

As teens begin to accept friend requests from strangers, what they may not realize is their potential for abuse.

People make fake accounts with false information including pictures that may be appealing to people looking for either friends, or sexual relationships. MySpace was forced to cancel 90,000 accounts on its site that were directly linked by authorities to sex offenders.

You can be whoever you want to be on the internet.  People making these fake accounts can look like someone that you would be friends with, but in reality be the complete opposite. Last October, in Minnesota, a man was charged for raping a woman on their first date after meeting on the Internet.  He slipped drugs into her drink that caused her to pass out.

These statistics may seem alarming, but this is reality.  So next time you go to accept a friend request, think to yourself: Is this person REALLY your "friend"? 

The next post will talk about the serious dangers that social media has on teenagers well-being, and mental health.  

Communication Through The Keys

Typical teenager using her smartphone as a quick, easy
form of communication.

Say you are sitting in your room watching TV, and needed your friends advice about something.  Would you rather getting up off your comfortable couch, get dressed, get in your car, and drive all they way over to your friend's house, just to have the conversation with him or her face to face? Or would you choose the faster option of sending them a quick message, the only ounce of work being typing a few sentences.

Given this situation, as appealing as getting off your comfy couch sounds, I'm sure most of you would choose the second option.  Picking up your smart phone, and typing a message out is an every day occurrence in this generation. Teenagers do not think twice about whether they should be having face to face conversations with people, or if messaging is good enough.

I'll even admit sometimes when I am upstairs in my room, and my Mom is downstairs, I will send her a quick text if I want to ask her something rather than getting up and going downstairs to talk to her...

With so many advancements in technology, this kind of communication certainly is easier and more convenient for teens with busy hectic lives, but what is not addressed is the negative effects that teenagers will experience in their future.

Dr. Larry Rosen, a social media researcher from California State University, found that teens who log on to Facebook or other sites more than average tend to show negative social behaviors such as being more “self absorbed, narcissistic, belligerent, paranoid, and antisocial” 

As convenient as it is to press a few buttons rather than have a face to face conversation with someone, this lack of communication with people can effect these innocent teenagers simply using the technology that was handed to them. 


When Leslie, a freshman student, was asked about the effect she sees on social media, she said “Everyone uses it all day for as many hours as they’re awake. Yes I think social media and texting is making teens more anti-social, because you are slowly being separated from the world, hours at a time, and are not interacting with people face to face and you start to become more silent and watching videos and checking Facebook status’s and tumblr reblogging stuff and it’s not helping at all with people’s social skills especially all those new slang words like ‘yolo’ and ‘tbh’, ‘irl’, ‘idk’, ‘ikr’, etc.” (click here for more information)

See, even an interviewed teenager said that social media was making people anti-social. 

These slang words used over text, or instant message may be short cuts so your fingers get too tired (God forbid), but  are certainly not helping communication skills.  Teenagers who are constantly using their phones are not getting the real world interactions with people that past generations have been able to.  

Communication through smartohones is not giving teenagers the first hand experience they need to develop relationships with their peers.  Everything is ok in moderation, and it is important to make sure to have a fine balance between talking to peers through technology and in person.

You don't want to end up anti-social and not be able to get a job because of your lack of communication.

Do you?

The next post will discuss the ways in which social media can lead to fake friendships, which could potentially be dangerous.

Why are teens so attached to their smartphones?

                                                                            

                                                                                             Click here to access the social networking section of the itunes app store

Social networking; simple as that.

With over 775,000 apps available in the iTunes app store, ask any teenager you see on their smart phone and chances are they all have the Facebook app.  Facebook is the most frequently downloaded app out of them all.

Think about it.  58% of kids ages 13-17 own smart phones.  The iTunes app store provides hundreds of social media apps, and better yet; free of charge. Just a click of a button away, teens can instantly download and access any form of social networking site they want to. A click of a button away, at any time and place. Simple as that.

With this being said, it is clear that social media is dominating the lives of teens. In fact, what are you doing right now? Ironic as it is, you are reading about social networking while on a social networking site.

Point proven.

Are you a teenager? If so, how many times a day do you check your Facebook, twitter, or instagram apps?

Are you a parent? Do you constantly see your kids, or any teens for that matter glued to their phones?

You may be thinking to yourself "Well, so what? I enjoy it." Of course you enjoy it. We all do. And that's the underlying problem.

Social media sites are an enjoyable, easily accessible way to keep in touch with friends and interact with the rest of the world.  You can do it all whether its posting your feelings on twitter, making statuses and adding photos on Facebook, uploading images to instagram, or finding new friends on apps such as tinder.

Nine out of ten teens use social media sites, and twenty-two percent those teenagers log on to Facebook ten times a day. Whether you are a victim or witness of this social media runoff, I'm sure you can agree that these statistics are skyrocketing. So take a step back, and think about it.

Will social media have a larger effect on this generation and future ones? Certainly. In fact, larger than active users may think.  Larger effects than anyone that presses their Facebook app when they are sitting around bored is even aware of.

The following posts will examine the effects of social media, and what impact its overuse has on some people, whether they know it or not.