Social media is a very big thing these days, small kids are starting to get smart phones a lot younger and they are trying to join as many social media websites as possible to try and be cool and see who has the most friends and likes. While teens have social media right in the palm of hands at any time can be good if they use it when they are supposing too and if they use it the right way but there are lots of different ways that it can be addicting and dangerous. There are lots of different reasons why kids and teens are involved in social media but most of them are on it to see what the new trends are or maybe to see what is considered the cool kid now.  Social media has a negative change on the way teens live their daily lives.  

Social media changes the way that families act.  A family can change lots of their traditions or setting because of social media and what is being put online.  Social media has the ability to rip brothers and sisters, and cousins and even moms and dads apart.  There are lots of reasons why social media can rip people apart, one of the biggest reasons that most people deal with and pulls them away from a loved one or close friend is when someone post a picture on the website with them and their friend or family member and then the family member or the friend does not like how he or she looks in the picture and tells them to take it down but the other person thinks they look good in the photo so they do not want to take it down.  Another reason is when people do not like to be posted anywhere on the internet or on any social media website they like to stay off things like that and want people to ask them for permission when posting a picture of them or using them in something, but there is always going to be that one picture where one of the people look good in it and they like the photo a lot but the other looks very bad and does not want to use it and then the fight starts.  Another reason why social media can tear a relationship apart is the opposite of someone not wanting their picture on the social media website, instead a girlfriend or boyfriend could want their partner to post a picture of them on social media and post something cute and sweet so everyone can see it and they will feel good and know about their relationship.  The problem with this is not everyone is interested in social media the girlfriend or boyfriend’s partner might not even have a social media profile and could have a really big problem with it so this causes lots of problems.  

Instead of everyone eating at the table or having family time in the living room and talking about school, the teens and kids look at their phones and talk to their friends on social media.  Most moms always say that they wish that their babies would never grow up and stay young forever but when they give them access to smart phones that have all kinds of different social media websites on it they are not helping them stay young.  When young kids and teens get on social media they are probably going to see or hear things that kids their age would not talk about or see so they are going to grow up and try to act a lot older than they really are when they are on social media all day every day.  If a parent gives a young teen a smart phone with access to all social media and has no restrictions then they will surely stumble upon something explicit that the parent would not want their child to see or hear or maybe even know about.

One of the biggest negative things that young teens experience on social media would be safety.  Young teens are always so willing to give out all their information or big news and share things with their friends and other people online.  This is very dangerous because when you post something on social media everybody can see it and they can take screen shots and save the photo in their phone and send it to anyone or something with bad intentions.  For an example that has actually happened, there was a kid in middle school that had over 1000 friends or followers on Instagram and he just turned fifth teen and got his driving permit and took a picture of it and posting it on this social media website, giving everyone on Instagram access to his full name, his address and lots of other things about him.  Another big problem with this is that almost every kid wants to have the most followers or friends so they will send anyone friend request and accept anyone’s request even if they do not know them.  This is a complete hazard because these kids are just inviting random people to walk into their life.  There could be someone pretending to be a different person and trying to talk to a small teen and get information or something else from them.  The teen is young and most of the time will fall for the trap and respond back to the stranger and give them something like information or maybe do something for them.  Teens need to realize that whatever they post online will be there forever and could possibly be used for something later in their life.  Just like in school and other social places there are always going to be a group of kids or maybe one kid that thinks they are cooler than everyone, so they will try to talk bad about other kids to look cool.  This is cyberbullying and is very dangerous it can happen easily there have been cases that have been so bad that one of the teens committed suicide, so this is nothing to be played with and every teen should be given a lesson about this and if happen to come across something cyberbullying them tell someone.  Another thing that is dangerous and causes lots of teens to get in trouble in some sort of way is the challenges on social media.  Every week there is a new challenge that some random person has come up with it could be squirt your teacher with a water gun or even get on the table and sing in dance during your lunch at school.  Of course if everyone around the world is doing it then the young teens are going to feel the need to do it also, so this can get them in trouble and maybe even hurt in some way.

Looking at a certain website or social media database can easily be addicting.  You should not want to be addicted to anything whether it is a drug or even looking at a website it is bad for your mind and feels like your mind is in jail.  Young teens should know the importance of not looking at your phone every two seconds because it will quickly become a habit and they will do it everywhere they go whether it is at a formal dinner or even church.  There are so many people that say it is very interesting and attention grabbing to scroll through Instagram and twitter to see what everybody is saying and talking about, and then once you have read everything just refresh the page and someone has probably posted something new that you could read.  But scrolling through Instagram is not the only way someone can get addicted to this social media website.  One can also become addicted by posting pictures and always telling everyone where you are at or what you are doing with pictures.  There are young teens that try to brag about where they are at by always posting pictures of their location or maybe always trying to show off and tell everyone that they are up in the morning and working out, when really they are probably just scrolling on Instagram and posting pictures instead of working out. There are lots of studies that show that most teens that are addicted to social media have something is called FOMO short for fear of missing out.  This means that they feel like if they do not check their social media feed every couple of minutes they will miss something big or something that will be very popular the next day at school.  Being too dependent on social media is similar to being addicted to it but not exactly the same.  When teens are too dependent on social media it can make them able to never pay their full attention to something because they are constantly thinking about what is going on in the social media world.  Teens will spend most of the time posting things instead of living in the moment, this is terrible because what is the point of posting pictures when you are not even enjoying it in the moment when it is actually happening.  A good way to tell if a teen is dependent on social media is if someone takes a picture of something and they are barely even visible in the photo and they say “tag me in that” this means that they only want the photo to show up in their profile and means that they are way too dependent on social media.  

Social media can ruin our social contact with other people and make us feel very uncomfortable while talking to people face to face.  It can be used as shield to an uncomfortable spot or place.  For an example when two people are in the elevator together with nobody else in there it can be an awkward spot for both people but instead of just breaking the silence and learning how to actually talk to other people face to face the teen would pull out the phone and scroll on Instagram until they get out of the awkward spot then they will put the phone up.  This is very bad for teens because it is not teaching them to learn how to talk to people and it helps them back down from social challenges.  You need to be able to actually talk face to face to people if you want to make it in life, so this does not help at all.  Social media is making all teens that overuse it very unsocial, lots of teens would rather talk to you on the phone over social media rather than talking to you in person.  All this being said you could say that social media really takes away our small talk skills or makes us not know what to do when there is a sudden silence in the group of people you are with.  

In these days the way you look and see who the cool guy is or what is very popular is looking on social media to see how many followers or likes that someone or a certain post gets.  Teens get lots of their styles from what they see on social media and try to dress like the social media famous people because they see that they have lots of friends online so it makes them think that they will get lots of friends like them if they do what they do.  A good example for this is, there was a kid that was not athletic at all and never played a sport in his life but he saw an Instagram famous person wearing some Nike clothes and some Kevin Durant’s on his feet.  He then tried to dress like this person and bought all athletic clothing and basketball shoes.  Teens also can change their attitude and their personality from things like this, if they see someone that they think is cool or a famous person acting a certain way then just like the kid that bought all the athletic clothes they will want to be like the famous guy or girl and change how they act and their personality to match theirs.  This can really go with lots of things, if a young teen sees an Instagram famous do anything that seems cool or gets lots of likes and lots of attention then the teen will most likely try and copy them to mimic their fame and seem cool.

There are also lots of things that social media does help teens with.  Social media can help with making friends that have the same interest as you, so you can find other people that are exactly like you.  It also helps you out when trying to reach out to someone and talk to them if they are in need.  For an example there was a story of a man that barricaded himself inside his house and was having suicidal thoughts but a police officer reached him on social media and talked him out of it and calmed the man down (Hootsuite, 2013).   Social media can make young teens socially awkward but there are some kids that just go through a socially awkward stage when they are that age, so for them social media could help them find other people like them and then they could talk to that friend about things that they like to talk about without feeling weird or nervous.  Another way that social media can help teens out is that it can give them ideas of what they want to be or do when they grow up because if they did not have something like that to see all the different ideas of what they could be or do when they get older than everyone would want to have similar careers.  There are different categories of people on social media there are the people that always post sports photos, the people that post pictures of nature like mountains and cliff jumping with a go pro, and there are people that post family and just blog about their life and there are many other categories.  All these categories will plant ideas and different thoughts in a young teens mind that will help them get an understanding of what they would like to do and might eventually help them invent or build off something new when they get older.  Social media also determines lots of different lingos and types of sayings that young teens say when something happens it could be happy, funny or even sad.  A good example for this is when someone makes a very successful meme and it is very funny like the Kermit the frog picture of him drinking coffee.  Lots of young teens thought this was very funny and everyone was using the joke at school and it went on for a really long time.  

After reading all of the facts and statements about social media, it shows that social media does great things for young teens these days but the odds of all of those things happening to a teen and none of the bad things happening to them are close to zero.  Social media changes the way teens see the world as a whole.  It also changes the way we live and the things we do, there is a picture of someone drowning in a lake and there is one person helping and there are other people filming it for social media and to show their friends.  Seeing that really makes me want to show people how bad all these social media websites are messing with young teens’ minds and making them want to show everyone who is not where they are at instead of living their life right then and there and in the moment.  Whether it is the teen getting addicted to refreshing the page until someone has posted something new, a teen posting a crucial piece of information about where they live or maybe something else, or even a young teen getting cyber bullied by someone because they are not with the popular group or wear any of the new brands and styles.  There are lots of ways that social media can have a very big negative impact on a young teens live and you have just read all of the ways that this is possible, now you should see that Social Media negatively affecting teen’s daily lives is very true.
