According to the Oxford dictionary, social media can be defined as, “websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking”. The first recognized social media network was launched in 1997, and was a fairly simple platform that allowed users to create an online profile and chat with other users called Six Degrees (Hedricks). Social media has certainly evolved a lot over the past 20 years and is a very relevant topic in today’s world with new technology being developed as quickly as our ever-growing egos, it only makes sense that people are constantly looking for new ways to boast about themselves for the world to see; and that’s where social media comes into play. Around the world, the average internet user has about 5.54 social media accounts that they are active on regularly (Mander), and the average person spends about 116 minutes on social media networks daily (Asano). It is evident that social media plays a big role in how the modern world currently communicates. From LinkedIn, where business professionals can establish an online presence for themselves, to Pinterest, where soccer moms can share the latest recipes for their upcoming bake sales, to Facebook, where relatives can share their political opinions that everyone loves reading about, to Shapchat, where users can find the perfect animal filter for their selfies; there is a social media network that will appeal to just about anyone. Social media is a daily part of life for most people, so much so that I believe we as a society have become so accustomed to this virtual reality that we may not actual realize how it affects us; especially those of us with younger minds. Younger kids tend to act almost like as a sponge when it comes to soaking up everything that’s going on around them. Nearly 56% of kids 8-12 years-old have some sort of cell phone (“Cell Phones”), and about 70% of U.S.  households with children have a shared tablet (Fidler). Due to social media being such a prominent part of today’s society, that usually causes kids to also want to be a part of this virtual world, but is that necessarily a good thing? I have a 9-year-old younger sister named Alessa that was recently given an iPod for her birthday. My stepmom felt confident in this decision, because Alessa mainly just watched YouTube videos anyways, and she trusted that Alessa was responsible enough to not get into any trouble with the iPod; she was unaware however, that Alessa had created an Instagram and a Snapchat account. One weekend, while Alessa was at a sleepover with her 13-year-old cousin, Alessa put up a picture of herself with a penis and several obscene acronyms written on her face to her snapchat story. Naturally, I sent a screenshot of the picture to my stepmom, and Alessa is no longer allowed to use her iPod. It’s instances like this that cause me to question if these younger kids are ready for all of the responsibilities that come with using social media accounts. In my sister’s case, I’m sure that she didn’t realize the possible repercussions that could come with putting inappropriate things online for anyone to see, but that’s precisely why she shouldn’t be allowed to use social media at her age. Using social media requires a fair amount of maturity, that at times some adult users haven’t even acquired yet; read the Facebook comments on a controversial post, you’ll see what I’m talking about. Therefore, through my extensive research, I have come to the conclusion that adolescents should be discouraged from using social media networks, because social media promotes unhealthy behaviors and products, and causes these younger children to lose sight of reality by way of depicting a virtual world.

One aspect of social media that tends to appeal to a lot of users is the sense of security it gives you. Social media networks give users a platform to post and talk about more-or-less whatever their heart desires in a what’s supposed to be “safe environment”. The problem, however is that with this sense of security also comes the aspect of anonymity that can often cause people to say things that they normally wouldn’t say in real life to someone’s face; and thus, cyberbullying was born. Cyberbullying can be defined as, “engaging in aggressive behaviors using digital technologies…on personal websites mostly by making derogatory or ostracizing hostile comments about others with the intention to harm” (Claster). Cyberbullying usually includes the bully or bullies using manipulative and controlling tendencies to make the victim feel excluded in a social context which could potentially cause damage to the victim’s social reputation. In a recent study, it was found that 20-40% of adolescents have been a victim to cyberbully at some point ("Concerns Regarding Social Media And Health Issues In Adolescents And Young Adults”). Young girls are more often victims of cyberbullying through social media; most of the bullying steaming from the girl’s physical appearance or jealousy within friend groups (Claster). Some people have the notion that cyberbullying among kids shouldn’t be taken seriously, because it’s not like one kid is physically attacking another kid, so what’s the issue right? As it turns out, “cyberbullying may create more damage than physical aggression” (Claster). Cyberbullying causes the victim a lot of psychological stress, which then leads to lower test scores, low self-esteem, headaches, issues falling asleep at night, bed-wetting tendencies, stomachaches, and suicidal tendencies ("Concerns Regarding Social Media And Health Issues In Adolescents And Young Adults”). The difference between physical bullying and cyberbullying is that fact that physical bullying can be avoided at times, for example, if the victim is bullied at a certain place, they can potentially begin avoiding said place, but cyberbullying usually follows the victim wherever they go. A lot of times cyberbully isn’t taken as seriously as physical bullying as well, because it can be harder for adults to intervene with cyberbullying, whereas if one kid was giving another kid a swirly, that’s something that’s a little more noticeable that will likely be broken up by an adult. Sometimes adults don’t fully understand that a victim of cyberbullying can’t just delete the social media accounts and try to ignore the bullying. At a young age, most kids believe that their online presence is everything; that it defines who they are. When you have someone actively spreading rumors and making fun of someone else, it causes the victim to feel isolated, and because the internet is everywhere, there is no true escape to their misery. Cyberbullying is a reason why younger kids shouldn’t be encouraged to use social media, because a lot of times kids aren’t always the best at filtering their opinions anyways, but when you add in the extra sense of anonymity that talking to someone behind a screen provides, it’s too easy for these adolescents to say something that could cause emotional destress to others. 

Another unhealthy and often risky behavior that it associated with social media is a phenomenon called “sexting”. Sexting is when a person sends compromising photos of themselves or sexual messages (that often times are a prelude to sex) to another person. Sexting can be used by couples to spice things up, and when the messages are sent between two consenting adults in a committed relationship, they can be harmless fun. However, even children can be at risk for some serious consequences if they partake in sexting at this early age. Sexting at a young age can lead to earlier sexual behaviors of other natures, STIs, unwanted pregnancy, guilt, shame, tendencies to develop substance abuse, and depression (Claster). Depending on the age of the child sending and receiving sexting pictures, the pictures could be considered “child pornography” and if one of the two participating in this exchange is significantly older, this could be considered a felony and the older participant could face jail time depending on the age of consent in the state they are residing in ("Concerns Regarding Social Media And Health Issues In Adolescents And Young Adults”). There are often times when inappropriate pictures can be sent when the receiver didn’t ask for nor approve of the pictures being sent, so even if the child doesn’t actively want to see these compromising pictures of someone else, they may find themselves in a situation where other people are just sending them pictures anyways. A recent study found that kids in the U.S. start seeing pornographic images as early as 6 years old (Sales 26). Another survey concluded that 22% of teenage girls, 18% of teenage boys, and 11% of younger kids (ages 11-16 years-old) have sent a nude picture at some point in their life (Claster). Sexting is something that requires a great deal of maturity and trust that is very rare to find in a young person. A big issue with sexting at any age, but especially when the participants are younger, revolves around the fact that just because you send a compromising picture of yourself to someone and they promise not to show anyone else, doesn’t always mean that they’ll keep their word. In the case of Jessica Logan, she sent a nude picture to her boyfriend, and then later after the pair had broken up, he decided to send the pictures to other girls at their high school (Claster). This caused Jessica to be labelled as a “slut”, and as a result of the bullying, she eventually committed suicide (Claster). Sexting at an early age can cause a child to grow up way too fast and cause them to lose their innocents. In 2014, Vine had to ban “sexually explicit material” due to reports of children as young as 11 posting “sexually charged videos” on the app (Sales 27). At this young age, the child’s frontal lobe (the brain’s center for inductive reasoning) hasn’t fully developed yet, meaning that a child is unable to understand completely why this type of behavior is unacceptable. If a child is currently sexting with someone, it can often be hard at times for the parent to even know, because if the child elects to send pictures through a social media app called Snapchat, there is no trace on their phone of the picture, meaning that any child with a smartphone can easily partake in the unhealthy behavior of sexting. 

Social media networks have also been known to advertise unhealthy products such as; junk food, alcohol, and tobacco products. On Instagram there are currently over 71 million posts tagged “#Foodporn” (Dunlop, Freeman, and Jones). Childhood obesity is at an all-time high in the U.S. and part of that steams from all these advertisements kids are being exposed to that use subliminal messages to market their unhealthy food. In 2012, a combination of $6 billion was spent on food advertisement on social media networks from 18 different popular fast-food chains (Dunlop, Freeman, and Jones). This means that after a kid spends all afternoon on their tablet watching YouTube videos instead of playing outside, they’ll probably ask their mom for McDonald’s and Twinkies for dinner! Social media networks are also really great at promoting other unhealthy products to underage kids; alcohol and cigarettes. In a survey, 50% of middle and high school students reported seeing an ad for tobacco within the last 3 months on Facebook (Dunlop, Freeman, and Jones). When a child is constantly exposed to alcohol or tobacco regularly, that usually runs the risk of these products becoming normalized to a child. Facebook is supposed to have their ads filtered so that only users above the age of 21 can’t see ads for alcohol, but the problem is that a lot of kids lie about their age when they make their Facebook account, so that defeats the entire purpose of this censorship (Dunlop, Freeman, and Jones). Even if the child isn’t seeing these ads directly, if they follow/are “friends” with someone else that is constantly posting pictures/videos/updates of themselves partaking in alcohol or tobacco consumptions, it can cause the child to also be more likely to want to try these products as well.

Social media users have the tendency to always want to post about the positive aspects of their life; whether it be a happy couple in the “perfect relationship” that’s always posting those adorable selfies, or someone that always seems to be posting pictures of their latest vacation, or those people that only ever post on Snapchat when they’re at some fabulous party. It seems that no one ever wants to post about things such as; getting into a fight with their significant other, failing a class, or issues within their family. Life is full of ups and downs and when the only thing you see on social media happens to be the ups, it causes this depiction of an ideal world that just isn’t realistic. If a social media user only ever sees posts about how wonderful their friends’ lives are while their current life is terrible, it can cause them to feel sensations of jealousy and negative feelings (Bashir). Adolescents especially are becoming more and more obsessed with competing for likes on posts and how they portray themselves on social media. In today’s world, for these kids, it’s described that building a social-media presence is “similar to building a brand” (Sales 26). Allison Graham reported that while giving a seminar on social media usage to teens at a high school, one teen informed her that, “We wait until 5 P.M. to post pictures to Instagram, because we know we’ll get more likes” (Graham). Instagram models are exceptionally known for depicting an idealistic world; and many are often paid well for doing so by advertising products. Essena O’Neill, an 18-years-old living in Australia, decided to give up all the money and glory that came with being a famous Instagramer with over 612,000 followers, because she realized that she had become too consumed by trying to keep up her social media presence (Hunt). Essena decided to delete over 2,000 posts from Instagram, and the remaining 96 she heavily edited the captions, so now her bikini pictures say things like, “I had my sister take over 70 pictures of me before I found one I liked instead of enjoying my time at the beach with my family”, and “I didn’t eat all day before taking this picture and I’m wearing two bras here” (Hunt). Essena told her followers that she was quitting all her social media accounts, because social media “is not real life” and that social media is just “contrived perfection made to get attention” (Hunt). Before she came out about how fake her Instagram profile was, Essena would have been considered one of those “perfect” girls you see on Instagram with their seemingly perfect bodies and their perfect lives that seem to only consist of wearing beautiful dresses and eating fruit on beaches. For younger girls especially, when they see these popular false profiles without realizing that nearly all of the pictures have been manipulated, they get the idea that this is how they’re supposed to look and act in order to be deemed pretty. This is when younger kids start to develop the belief that their number of likes somehow begins to equal their self-esteem (Graham). Many kids now are unfortunately being born into these narcissistic tendencies through no fault of their own. About 92% of current children in the U.S. are said to have an online presence before the age of 2, and on average they have about 1,000 pictures of themselves posted online before their 5th birthday (Sales 26). These kids are being taught from a very young age to be obsessed with their social media presence and that a 2D virtual world is more imperative than the real world that is occurring around them. 

Social media, like everything in the world, has positive aspects as well as negative aspects. Some parents believe that the positive outweigh the negative, like in the case of Shannon Kyle; a mother of a teenage daughter. Shannon argues that social media is beneficial for teens and young adults, because it allows them to boost their self-esteem, make new friends from all around the world, have tons of information at their fingertips to educate themselves, and makes keeping in contact with family easier than ever (Kyle). Shannon claims that her daughter’s self-esteem grew after having positive comments posted on her Instagram selfies (Kyle). The issue with this however, as mentioned previously, is that this has the risk of causing a young adult’s perception of themselves to be revolved around the validation that comes with the amount of likes they receive instead of having their own self-confidence. Also, it is equally as easy to receive negative comments on a post as it is to receive positive comments, which would most likely lower the poster’s self-esteem. Shannon also mentioned that her daughter made new friends from all over the world through Twitter and other social media networks that allowed her to learn about other cultures (Kyle). The danger with this however, is that people aren’t always who they say they are on the internet, and someone that claims to be a 13-year-old “Belieber” could very easily be a 40-year-old pedophile chatting with a 12-year-old. Countless children have been abducted from online predators, 13-year-old Nicole Lovell from Virginia was one of them (Sales 26). Social media can also be a great source for young adults to receive their news and become educated with what’s going on in the world (Kyle). Shannon is correct that social media can be a great news-outlet for those of us that no longer elect to read the newspaper, however, when social media users are constantly being bombarded with this flow of information every time they log into Facebook, those users run the risk of being desensitized to important issues that do matter (Bashir). Finally, Shannon advocates for young adults using social media by saying that it allows users to easily share pictures and keep up-to-date with family and friends (Kyle).  The problem with this however, is that it causes social media users to opt for more superficial relationships. In 2001, a Gallop survey concluded that the average person in the U.S. has about 10 close friends; that same survey was conducted again in 2014 and found that the average person now only has about 2 close friends (Graham). This could be explained, again by people being more obsessed with the online world than the real world. Now, instead of calling Grandma up to wish her a happy birthday, a teen can just write it on her Facebook wall. Instead of taking the time to tell friends and relatives about a promotion at work, it’s easy to just post a status update about it and assume that everyone now knows. Social media allows its users to connect with anyone they want from all around the world at any time, but are they real connections? 

Today’s society has become so obsessed with always wanting to live in the now and always being up-to-date with everything and everyone, that often, we no longer step back to think about the consequences of doing so. Social media can undeniably be fun and exciting and even beneficial at times; if the users know how to operate it responsibly. I believe however, that most young adults are not responsible enough to partake in using social media given the possible consequences, such as; making it more likely that these adolescents partake in unhealthy behaviors and products, and the likeliness that these adolescents begin to lose sight of reality in favor of a virtual world. There are ways to better control for these young adults being on social media. Some social media networks have a minimum age requirement to sign up, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Kik. The problem is though, that the cites do little, if anything, to actually monitor their users’ age, and often times the user only needs to create an email account that says they are the minimum age. In my opinion, the cites need to better monitor their users in order to ensure that everyone is the correct age, such as having users confirm their age by typing in a driver’s license number or even a social security number when signing up. Another way to fix this problem, is to have parents be more proactive when it comes to monitoring how their child spends their time online. It is evident that there are a lot of things that a parent should considered before allowing their child to partake in the world of social media, such as the child’s age and maturity level. This may cause the child to not be their parent’s number one fan for a while, but in my opinion, a child’s mental and physical health is more important than their social status. 
