HOW DOES SOCIAL MEDIA AFFECT

TEENAGERS

“It takes discipline not to let social media steal your time.”
-Alexis Ohanian

Good morning colleagues, judges, teachers and the general public. I am

currently in my 3rd year of secondary school, and today I am going to talk
about a topic that I think is important to understand: “How Does Social
Media Affect Teenagers”

As we well know, technology is something that was improved at the

beginning of the 21st century, at that time very few people used it since it
was something very recent and it could be more complicated to understand
it, as the years passed, more progress was made in the field of technology.
And social networks were created, before only adults used advanced
devices, but until just over 5 years ago teens began to use much more
advanced devices and can be considered “experts” in social networks since
they are younger and were born when the technology began to be created.

Something that parents do not always realice when letting their children
use the networks is that these are not 100% healthy and safe, since
sometimes young people tend to depend on them, have low self-esteem,
feel dissatisfied with themselves, suffer from anxiety, depression and even
isolate themselves from their family and from real life.
Addiction to social networks can be generated by the lack of attention and
affection that exists in families, and for this reason teens often seek
approval in social networks to feel good and loved in some way. There are
times when young people are so influenced by the networks that they
change their way of being and publish content that can offend others just to
“fit in” with society.
 Sometimes we judge and make offensive comments to those who publish
content on social networks when we do not know what they are really
going through and if our comment affected them so much, because we only
think about what we see and do not have empathy to keep our rude
comments to ourselves and sometimes meaningless.

Social networks are so well known and large worldwide that there are
some where you can talk and meet people from all over the world and this
is done by both adults and young people, which becomes bad since you do
not know if it is someone who wants to make you damage.
As parents, they must know at what age it is convenient and healthy for
your child to have a telephone or a technological device, but guiding and
advising their children on how to use networks responsibly, we young
people must also understand that not always at young age we have to be
surrounded by technology, since there are also books, board games or parks
to entertain us, have fun and learn without the need to use a telephone,
computer or ipad.