Social media refers to all applications and websites that enables people around the world to communicate through the internet, chat and share content ,video calls among many other functions it offers to it’s users. For a person to be a member of any social media, he or she has to first signup and then sign in to access it and be able to share and chat with other users of that social media platforms. Some of the commonly and widely used social media platforms include Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Instagram and many others.
Over the past decades ,social media have gained so much growth and development worldwide to an extent that many researchers are now interested in learning more about the social platform and their effects on the community. Despite the fact that almost everyone is connected to one social media platforms or the other, the youths and the teenagers are the leading and most fanatic of these social platforms to the point that they browse while in class or even in religious centres. It is with this that we have found that these social sites impact the lives of the youths in terms of morals, behavior and even education wise.
The use of social media has both positive and negative impacts on the youths today. In this article, I’ll shed light to the impacts of social media specifically to the youths. They include:
The positive impact of social media on the youths today include making them aware of events happening in the world and also enables them stay connected with their fellow youths and friends without physical meetings. It bridges the gap between friends. A person who stays in Africa can connect freely with their friends in other countries. This helps in strengthening relationship among classmates in school or college who after finishing school,moved to other countries around the world. Also, youths can create groups and pages in the social media platforms based on their profession and this leads to connections and more opportunities being opened for their respective disciplines. This can even lead to more employment opportunities being created for the unemployed youths. Social media makes life enjoyable, efficient and easier.
Moreover,the use of the internet enhances students understanding of the lessons being taught and enables them to get higher grades.ย It has also increased student’s interest in their academic activities like lessons and homework by simplifying their task and improving an effective interaction among students and teachers.ย
Furthermore,some negative impacts of the social media on the youths include exposing youths below eighteen years to online predators who get to woo them into sexual misconducts. It also exposes youths to pornographic movies being shared in some of the social media platforms or groups. This leads to early pregnancies among the girls causing them to drop out of school. It can also lead to contraction of HIV and some deadly sexual infections and this can lead to death of youths.
Social media also provided a good platform where cyber theft and bullying is done and this increases the chances and incidences of identity theft. This has a number of risks to the youths as their personal information can get leaked or tampered upon. It can also lead one to join groups of cults which in turn can also lead to frequent Killing of people in society especially the youths as a sacrifice to these cults.
In conclusion, social media has proved to have both positive and negative effects on the youths. Individuals should minimize the way they access the internet and be moderate on their usage. Parents should guide and advise their children on the usage of social media and warn them of it’s negative impacts to then when overused. The school curriculum should also be revised so that it can include social media as a subject or course on its own so as to alert students that they need to be extra careful in their social media usage.
