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Kayla Dance Adam Padgett ENGL 1102 April, 1st 2014

Social Media Affects Everyone

Social media has been affecting more and more peoples lives throughout the passing years, starting with college students and moving on to the elderly. Everyone hears about the negative effects that social media causes, such as cyber bullying and the harmful outcome it has. One would assume that children are affected by social media in a more negative way than adults, which research shows to be true. In contrast adults are found to have positive experiences with social media showing that these communications can be useful when used correctly. There are many ways in which this can be demonstrated, starting with the influence of younger children, from early ages between 3 and 10, have while and from using the various social media. Children and teens are showing to have a massive number of negative experiences using social media. In his book about the influence of various media on younger children, Andy Ruddock presents the ways in which teenagers and young children select which social media to use. Their selections are based on their friends choices as well as their age groups, current hobbies, interests, family selects, and other factors. In his book, Ruddock explains that teenagers use social media to waste time, ignore current responsibilities and homework. They

are also more inclined to chat about casual, more unimportant topics such as daily events. Adults on the other hand tend to only share important life events such as weddings, children, and other landmarks in life. This shows that adults are prone to using social media for useful means, unlike teenagers who have limited responsibilities. Adults have no time for useless chat or mindless bullying, usually, and this mainly see the positive sides of social media when they use it. There are other ways in which children are bound to misuse it and experience negative effects. At times, this leads into the problem that sexting is prevalent on social media sites. Teenagers are more likely to be engaged with sexting-like activities via social media websites due to the ease and access of technology (Ruddock). It has also been found that young children that are using social media have a tendency to have a disadvantage in learning. Diane Barone, a professor at University of Nevada specializing in literacy, has found through research the strengths and weaknesses that social media have on young children. Barone found that young children, who often learn through their bodies, are limited in learning due to the lack of physical movement while using devices to interface with social media throughout the day. At first, it may not seem as though this would be such a strong hindrance, but if one were to imagine the number of devices we interface with daily allowing us to use social media platforms, it becomes easier to see just how often we stop to do so. This limits physical activity, as well as communications within the family (Barone). Children develop language skills from their parents directly. However social media influences on a child at a young age may affect the way they learn language. This can create a boundary between the two, where a child may not feel as comfortable communicating with another sibling and/or parent due to their lack of common language. The language habits of

young children are impressionable, so much that seeing and interpreting the way others outside of their family communicate via social media platforms may interfere with the way they communicate. This can create a gap when their siblings and parents are not able to communicate on such a level. Children are not able to distinguish between right and wrong as easily as adults, obviously, which leads to another problem as well children are picking up bad habits and foul language through speaking with other children and seeing the posts adults make via social media. This in turn could cause a child to use that language and further spread the problem (Barone). In a recent study by Denise Agosto in the Journal of the American Society of Information Science, she found that 93% of US teens are using social networks, and that number would be close to 100% if they all had internet access today. She ran a study on the factors that high school teenagers use to determine which social networking website to cling to the most. A few of the reasons are due the number of immediate friends that use a certain platform, the hope in moving up on the social ladder, or using a platform in which they can meet new friends from different groups. She also found that teenagers use these platforms to bully peers not in their immediate group of friends, which will help them advance with another group of teenagers. This can be taken out of hand often as the user may not realize just how damaging they are, having tunnel vision towards their goal of being popular. Through these reasons, we see the way teenagers use social media, and the negative effects they may have on them (Agosto). Social media is used to spread information to many people at a fast rate, enabling charities and other organizations to gain money and awareness. With children typically ignoring anything that does not directly apply to them adults are the ones that are advancing

from the knowledge and benefits of the organizations. Eva Menezes, a professor at the University of Texas, found that the Ronal McDonald House Charity was able to obtain a large beneficiary simply because they beneficiarys leader noticed them on Facebook, putting them at the top of her mind while they were deciding who to benefit. She goes on to explain a few other organizations, complete with interview quotes, user data, and other research on how Facebook can affect the way people see nonprofits. She explains that Facebook is the de facto standard for people telling their message nowadays, and how its uses can benefit people of all ages (Menezes). While children are being hurt by this technology the elderly are having a very different experience. It is no secret that the majority of social media users are young, but the older generations are using the technology. Only about 7 percent of online users that are 65 years of age and older have a profile on a social media site. This comes from the intimidating stereotype that technology has for people with advanced years, which is obvious to most. The elderly have not had the same time to adapt to using online services that their younger counterparts have, forcing the majority of them to live without it for the most part. This makes us believe that older adults so not participate in social media or the internet in general, which makes the scope of adult experiences appear to be smaller, and upsets the data. It is important to note that the positive experiences of elderly social media usages exist and should be counted towards the data as a whole (Bo). While the number of elderly that are using this technology is low the affects for them are positive. They are shown to have a more social environment than their peers that are not using social media, by staying connected to their younger children, and to their friends, as

shown by research from Bo Xie and Ivan Watkins from the University of Maryland. From their studies they concluded that older adults using social media often have positive responses with minimal negative influences in their age group. This leads us to believe that adults are primarily benefiting from social media. (Bo). Social media does have its benefits and disadvantages to society as a whole. Younger people have to watch out for the dangers of social media, which are different depending on the specific age group. Young children may be at a learning disadvantage while older teenagers may be bullied or participate in the bullying of their peers. Older people have to learn the skills of technology to enjoy the benefits of social networking. With older people showing that they are able to manage how they are affected by social media it shows that children and teenagers have to mature before taking on the risks of social media. Through various research studies it has been found that the negative effects outweigh the positive ones during teenage use of social media, while adults primarily see benefits from the social media, keeping its use to a minimum and usually only posting and reading major life events that would apply to them.