Social media and teens generation

Cyberbullying is a form of bullying or harassment which is done online by using electronic means. And
this activity has become very popular among teenagers. The actual meaning of it is when a teenager
harasses or bullies others on the internet, especially social media sites. Examples of cyberbullying are
posting rumours, sexual threats, revealing the victim’s personal information, pejorative labels, etc. There
are many adverse effects on both the teenagers who are a victim of cyberbullying and the ones who do
it. And the victims face issues like low self-esteem, increase in their intent to suicide, emotions like
frustration, always being angry, depressed, etc. Social media plays a significant role in teenagers mental
health, and issues like suicide intents due to the addiction to social media sites.

Firstly, social media plays a significant role in the mental health of teenagers. There has been an
academic drop in the student’s school life due to the cyberbullying. And the reduction of GPA and test
scores are due to the low mental health. The main reason behind this is that the students start to drop
out of classes and hence, the reduction in grades as stated by the stopbullying.gov (n.d.). Then the
other problem faced by teenagers is low self-esteem due to being a victim. And this also results in
withdrawal from the family and spending most of their time alone as stated by bullying.co.uk(n.d.).
Whenever a person is facing cyberbullying in real life, then he/she starts spending even less time with
people and lives alone most of the time. And this all can be observed as they also become reluctant for
their family or friends to go near their phone or laptop. They always stay withdrawn from the world. This
is due to depression. As per an NIH report(2015), the students being part of any side of cyberbullying
whether the victim or the bullies are having higher levels of depression as compared to the ones who
are not involved in all these activities.

Secondly, suicide is a significant issue faced by teenagers due to cyberbullying. Lohman, R.C.(2013)
states that people have started creating fake profiles on social media and then are using them to harm
other people. This all is known by the term catfishing, which is also a cyberbullying. The purpose of
catfishing is to pursue a deceptive relationship on the internet and then use personal information to
blackmail or bully the other person. And these are the reasons why the thought of suicide comes under
the mind of teenagers. There has been an increase in suicide rates. Nikolaou(2017) states that
cyberbullying has direct and robust effects on the suicidal rates and the increased attempts of the
suicides. Then he also says that the suicide percentage is more in men as compared to women. The
statistics are also given that cyberbullying has a substantial impact on suicidal rates and has increased it
by 14.5 % and the number of attempts of suicide by 8.7%. Then, parents play an essential role in
recovering their child from the worse effects of cyberbullying. Fagell P.L.(2019) states that the parents,
in this case, must stay calm, engaged and non-judgmental. Parents must support their kids at they
must remind them of their achievements and which choices they have taken and what happened after
that. And as psychologist Mary Alvord says that instead of saying how great they are to kids the parents
must instead give them choices for what good they have done within that month and did it lead to
something good. That’s how they can help teenagers to live a healthy and happy life.

Thirdly, the addiction to social media is increasing among teenagers, and there are several adverse
effects because of that. The first and foremost worse effect is sleep paralysis in teenagers. Social media
and sleep (n.d.) state that social media has grown very much in recent decades and the sleep is
affected because of that, in fact, reduced. And this has been proven as per the survey was done by the
CDC. And the study shows that the average amount of sleep required was approximately 7.5 hours, and
the people sleep just 6.8 hours after the introduction of social media. And one-third of the population is
missing out on the needed sleep. Ghosh S(2017) states that the negative effects of social media are
increasing day by day and the main concern is that social media encourages violent behaviour within
the teenagers. And all of this has a severe impact on the functioning of the bullies and victims. There
are several news reports regarding this topic which show that due to social media, the teenagers are
starting to participate in violent activities like gang violence, suicides, and many more. Social media is
fueling up all of these troubling incidents. Then, Anderson(2018) clearly states that the most common
type of cyberbullying online is name-calling. And the primary kind of harassment that the youth face is
due to the social media they use. On social media false rumours are spread about the teenagers, and
that has lead to many threats for the victims. About 42% of the teens say that they have been called
offensive names online or via their cellphones. So this means that social media makes teenagers even
more prone to cyberbullying.

On the other side, social media helps teenagers in some ways. The main positive impact due to social
media is that it offers the service of communication with each other and hence meeting new people in
their life. Notopoulous K.(2018) states that 81% per cent of teens are feeling more connected with
their friends due to social media. Then about 71% of teenagers said that social media is helping them
to show their creative side. 69% said that social media is helping them make new friends in their life
and the main benefit being that the friends include people with diverse backgrounds. And about 68%
of people claim that it was through social media that they got help during their tough times of life. As
whenever the teenagers face significant problems in life and hence are facing a tough time, then they
need someone to talk to and thus express their genuine inner emotions. That’s where social media
comes into the picture as it could provide them with the person who they are looking forward to
listening to their problems and help them figure out something. These are the significant benefits that
social media offers to people. They help the people connect with friends very far away from them
geographically and talk to them without any hindrances. So as we know that a coin has two sides,
similarly, social media has both positive and negative effects on the life of teenagers. It depends on how
they are using it. If used in a good sense, then it is beneficial for them and hence helps to stay connected
with all their friends all the time.

The rebuttal to the above counterargument is that there are both kinds of people on social media sites.
Both good and bad people could communicate with teenagers. When communicating with a right
person then it’s food, but if by chance the listener on the other side is a wrong person then he/she can
spread even more rumours about the teenager, leak the personal information, and also try to blackmail
the teenager for some own benefits. This is the drawback of social media, and so that’s why any person
cannot be trusted directly. Talking to a wrong person could change the behaviour of the teenager and
then he/she would always be found alone, depressed, and lacking the happiness of life. This is why one
must always be careful while talking to anyone on social media sites.

To sum up, we saw the significant drawbacks of social media, which were all caused due to cyberbullying
of central teenagers. The bullies were using social media as a medium to bully the teenagers and hence
get some personal benefits or just for fun. Due to these all, the teenagers were lacking happiness in life
and therefore were mostly depressed and staying away from social gatherings and even spending less
time with their family. The suicide rates were increased, and the number of attempts also got a hike due
to different forms of cyberbullying. And then we saw how parents could help their children and save
them from the harsh effects of bullying by giving them choices of what they did right and hence improve
their life. We also saw one reason why the social media is right that is for the communication purposes,
but that is too risky as there are both good and bad people on social media and one never knows who
he/she is talking with. Hence one must always be cautious while posting anything on social media and
therefore take preventive measures so as not to become a part of cyberbullying from any side. That’s
how cyberbullying is harmful to teenagers.