THE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA TO THE CHILD'S EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT

BILANDO, APRIL MAE

LORENZO, GLAIZA

OMBRETE, BRYAN

A RESEARCH PAPER SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE DEPARTMENT OF

EDUCATION, VALENCIA COLLEGES INCORPORATED IN FULLFILLMENT OF THE
COURSE LANGUAGE (EDUC 1)

BSE SOCIAL STUDIES 2

 DECEMBER 2023

CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION

Because of the considerable influence that contemporary digital media have on

learning, we now live in a digital age. In order for children and young people to develop
as holistically as possible and to be adequately prepared for an independent and
responsible life, the paper will first present the findings of research on the effects of
social media on children's emotional development before formulating some
recommendations on how schools should respond to these challenges in the digital age.

Frith, E. (2017) stated that social media has been defined as “forms of electronic
communication (such as websites for social networking and microblogging) through
which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages,
and other content (such as videos)”. High profile social networking sites include
Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Given the emerging popularity of instant messaging
services, such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Snapchat, we have also
explored research on such messaging where available.

The internet may be a double-edged sword. Neuroscientist Susan Greenfield

(2014) argued in her book Mind Change that digital technology has deleterious effects
on personality, identity and relationships.
 CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

Figure 1 shows the conceptual model of the study on the effects of social media to the
child’s emotional development

The first frame presents the input of the study that includes profile of the
respondents such as age, grade level, and type of social media being used.

The second frame presents the process of the study that involves assessment on
the effects of social media to the child's emotional development through surveys,
interviews and observations.

The third frame presents the output of the study which includes the assessed
levels on social media’s effects the child’s development and proposing an action plan.
 The connections and transformation of the profile and aspects with the actions
performed into results that are deemed to be output are shown by the arrows from the
input to the process and to the output.

The feedback is shown by the arrow from the output, which shows how the
pieces are connected and flow continues.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

This study's major goal was to obtain data on how social media affects children's
emotional development for Valencia Colleges Incorporated junior high school students.
Based on the conducted interview, the following problems are listed below in an effort to
develop solutions:

1. Do they use social media more frequently?

2. What effect does it have on the emotional growth of the child?

3. What do people find when they browse social media platforms?

4. What steps should be taken to increase the options for managing their emotional
development?
 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

This research is being done in order to address current issues and challenges that need
to be solved right away. The findings of this study will give important information to
various educational sectors about how social media affects junior high school students
at Valencia Colleges Incorporated's schools in terms of their emotional development as
children.

The following benefactors may benefit from this study:

To the learners, who learns about the effects of social media to the child's development
and on the conduct of the students, who get information and knowledge from their
respective teacher. Through new strategies to deal with the affects of social media and
how to be more effective in their lives, it will help them learn new information about the
awareness of social media's effects on the child's emotional development.

To the parents, who are committed to supporting their children in excellent parenting so
that they can grow up in a decent and safe community understand the impacts of social
media on children' emotional development, allowing them to spend more time on their
children' upbringing. It will be extremely important because of how children will interact
with the social media environment. This will immensely aid parents in having more
productive conversations with their children.

To the instructors, who have been the conduits of information and knowledge to their
students in terms of instruction and delivering the best education possible. It will be
easier for them to handle the students' search for new coping mechanisms if they are
aware of the effects of social media on a child's emotional development. It will help
teachers better explain to students how they should include it into their teaching
methods so that students feel more satisfied with how they are being guided.

School administrators, who attempts to encourage teachers' performance as online

instructors through seminars, trainings, and other initiatives scientific support. This will
greatly help to assist them in helping them to provide helps and bring the highest care
for them and how should they use the awareness about social media effects on
emotional development of the students, especially those students who are in need of
attention because they are unaware of social media effects on a child's emotional
development.

Future researchers, who will use the research findings of this study as a guide when
performing investigations that are similar to it. They can connect their research to how
using social media affects a child's emotional development and its relevance and utility.

SCOPE AND DELIMITATION

The goal of the study is to ascertain how social media affects a child's emotional
growth. 10 junior high school students will make up the participants since a purposeful
sampling method will be used. To fully understand the effects of social media on a
child's emotional development, the implications of using social media in daily life, and to
raise awareness about the use of social media, this project will collect data through in-
depth interviews, questionnaires, and observations. The information will be obtained
online via Google Meet, Google Forms, and Zoom, along with interviews, surveys, and
observations. The primary research tool for the study will be an unstructured interview,
and surveys will be created when the interview is finished.
 DEFINITION OF TERMS

To help you better understand the study, the terms below are explained based on how
they were used in the research.

Social media are interactive media platforms that make it easier to create and share
content through online communities and networks, including information, ideas,
interests, and other kinds of expression.

Emotional development involves learning what feelings and emotions are,

understanding how and why they occur, recognizing your own feelings and those of
others, and developing effective ways for managing those feelings.

Junior High School or Middle School is an educational stage which exists in some
countries, providing education between primary school and secondary school. The
concept, regulation and classification of middle schools, as well as the ages covered,
vary between and sometimes within countries.

Student is a person who is enrolled in a school or other educational institution. Pupils at

primary or elementary schools are referred to as "students" in the majority of
commonwealth nations.
 CHAPTER 2
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

What Is Social Media and Its Uses

According to (Miller, D. 2016) that Social media should be viewed more as the
contents that are put on these platforms than as the actual platforms on which
individuals publish. This content varies greatly from region to region, necessitating a
comparative analysis. The way we explain social media in one location shouldn't be
taken as a description of social media in general; rather, it is a localized example.
Today, social media serves as a space for social interaction as well as a channel for
communication. There were mostly either private conversational media or public
broadcasting media before social media. Digital technology is an important aspect of the
factors that influence child development. The inclusion of digital technology in the
developmental life of children invades many stages of development that children should
achieve. Technology makes their lives faster (instant) and more efficient. Entertainment
technologies such as television, internet, video games, iPods, iPads, and others have
grown so rapidly that they make families almost unaware of the significant impact and
lifestyle changes in their families (Rowan, 2013).

According to Bosman Zagenczyk (in Herlanti, 2016) social media has the nature
of relating, sharing, and collaborating (connecting, sharing, and collaboration). Social
media is an online media that allows users to participate, share and create content
(Herlanti Y, 2016). Social media has great potential to be developed in education in
Indonesia, viewed from two sides, namely the number of users. The number of social
media users in Indonesia is quite large, especially weblog and Facebook users. On
June 24, 2012, the Silangsilang site recorded the number of weblog (blogger) users as
many as 6,022,539 and the socialbakers site recorded the number of Facebook users
on February 1, 2013, totaling 48,777,600. According to Wikipedia (2018), social media
is an online media, with its users being able to easily participate, share and create
content including blogs, social networks, wikis, forums, and the virtual world.

Social media is a means, means, tool or container to support harmony in

socializing, which is why he is called social media, people who are anti-social should not
be social media, or permissible, provided that the media becomes a psychic therapeutic
tool for their future ( people who are anti-social) can change and have high social
integrity (Alim M, 2018). Although interaction and communication between social media
users are emphasized in this definition, Fredman (2013) divides social media platforms
into two different groups as interactive and non-interactive social media environments.
According to the way Fredman (2013) distinguishes social media platforms, interactive
social media environments provide a way for users to communicate. Outputs of the
software programs that make this communication among users possible depend on
input from registered users in these environments to the system. In other words, all
kinds of information and interpretation that users share in the system directly affect the
output of the programs.

According to (Aydin 2012) that Facebook is a social networking platform for those
over the age of 13 and hosts over a billion accounts worldwide (Kross et al. 2013).
Facebook is distinct from other social media in that it provides a forum where youth can
see information posted by other people and gain access to information about the social
networks of others, such as who their friends are connected to. Social media has been
implicated as one reason for the evolution of the very concept of friendship. Johnson
and Becker (2011) summarize how friendship, once conceptualized by researchers as a
“fragile” relationship, might now better be conceptualized as a “flexible” relationship.
They argue that computer-mediated communication (CMC) has contributed to
friendships being more “elastic” and prone to changes over time. They rightly note that
constant contact with friends is not the same as quality contact, however.
Emotional Development Towards Social Media Use

According to (Um, Plass, Hayward, & Homer, 2012). Most models of multimedia
learning focus primarily on cognitive factors and do not sufficiently consider the impact
of on learning. However, recent research has shown that the emotional design of
multimedia learning material can induce positive emotions in learners that in turn
facilitate comprehension and transfer. According also to (Nahriyah S, 2017: 66) that the
development of an increasingly sophisticated era of all modern, parents is required to
be more extra careful in maintaining, guiding, paying attention to children's growth and
development. So that children do not fall into the negative effects of the development of
the era. Parents must be able to understand and follow the development of technology
so that they can guide and direct children when using the technology. Because every
technology has a positive and negative impact.

As Barth (2015) observes, adolescents who have grown up in a world of

constant online communication cannot imagine the childhoods of most clinicians, who
grew up without it, and paradigms of development, socialization, sexualization, and
education have fundamentally changed. This constant communication is primarily
maintained via the Internet (social networking sites, such as Facebook, status update
sites such as Twitter, and media sharing sites such as Instagram) and via modern
cellular phones (in the form of text messaging and instantaneous picture sharing). The
many different forms that this communication can take are often considered under the
umbrella term of “social media” (Von Muhlen and Ohno-Machado 2012).

In fact, Yang and Brown (2013) found that self-reported levels of loneliness are
lower and that social adjustment is higher for late adolescents who use Facebook in
order to maintain relationships while transitioning to college. Similarly, some report that
high school students’ loneliness decreases with increased Facebook use (Lou et al.
2012). Jordán-Conde et al. (2014) found that late adolescents frequently use Facebook
to communicate intimate topics with their friends, although adolescent populations do
not appear to use Facebook to form romantic relationships (Moreau et al. 2012).

Dolev-Cohen and Barak (2013) also suggest that instant messaging, which
involves sending electronic messages back and forth in an online conversation, can
contribute to the well-being of adolescents who are distressed by providing an outlet for
their emotions. Despite these strong ties to Internet communication, Kearney (2013)
reported that adolescents do not perceive their interactions on Facebook as providing
the same level of friendship quality as the relations they experience face-to-face,
indicating that in-person communication is not threatened by SNS use. Clearly, using
the Internet for communication purposes has numerous benefits for the emotional well-
being of youth. Aside from the social benefits, the potential educational benefits of
social media should not be forgotten.

Public health organizations have published data on successful use of social

media as a way of reaching their target populations (e.g., Kornfield et al. 2015).
Particularly for younger children, there is evidence that “safe and secure online
communication” can teach understanding of and positive attitudes towards other
cultures and foster learning about the world and multiculturalism (Hou et al. 2015). It
should be noted that not all of these findings are specific to Facebook use, pointing to a
lack of depth, breadth, and consensus within the literature. In fact, studies which
correlated increased Internet use with greater depressive symptomatology have failed
to show a similar correlation between SNS use and depression, which further supports
that not all Internet use is equal (Banjanin et al. 2015).

Some researchers argue that adolescents are cautious when using SNSs and
thus their safety is not at high risk (Reich et al. 2012), whereas others report that
adolescent caution regarding the disclosure of personal information on Facebook varies
depending upon individual and social differences (Liu et al. 2013).
 CHAPTER 3
RESEARCH DESIGN

To establish the effects of social media on the emotional development of junior

high school students at Valencia Colleges Incorporated, the researcher will employ a
qualitative methodology. This will be done using a case study research design, in which
the researcher investigates a real-world, contemporary bounded system (a case) or
multiple bounded systems (cases) over time, through careful observations, in-depth
data collection involving multiple sources of information through interviews and surveys,
and detailed observations.

LOCALE OF THE STUDY

Valencia Colleges Incorporated, located at P-17A Hagkol, Valencia City,

Bukidnon, would be the site of the study. with top-notch instructional techniques and a
center of excellence. Only students in junior high school will be the subject of the
investigation. The way the school understands the impact of social media on a child's
emotional development is quite extraordinary. Surveys, in-depth observations and
interviews will be used to collect information from participants in order to analyze how
social media affects child's emotional development.

DATA GATHERING PROCEDURE

The participants will get a letter outlining the purpose of the study, the procedures, and
the importance of their responses as the first stage in the data collection technique for
this project. The prerequisites will be satisfied before the investigation can start. The
three primary objectives of the study will be accomplished by in-depth interviews,
surveys, and observations. Learning everything there is to know about how social media
affects a child's emotional development is the first step. Second, to examine how their
views on social media and how they use it relate to their emotional development. Lastly,
to identify the underlying causes of how social media affects a child's emotional
development

REFFERENCES

Banjanin, N., Benjanin, N., Dimitrijevic, I., & Pantic, I. (2015). Relationship between
Internet use and depression: Focus on physiological mood oscillations, social
networking and online addictive behavior. Computers in Human Behavior, 43, 308–312.

Dolev-Cohen, M., & Barak, A. (2013). Adolescents’ use of Instant Messaging as a

means of emotional relief. Computers in Human Behavior, 29, 58–63.

Frith, E. (2017). Social media and children's mental health: A review of the evidence.

Greenfield, S. (2014). Mind change: How digital technologies are leaving their mark on
our brains. London: Rider.

Herlanti Yanti. (2016). Blogquest+: Pemanfaatan Media Sosial pada pembelajaran

Sains Berbasis Isu Sosiosaintifik untuk Mengembangkan Keterampilan Berargumentasi
dan Literasi Sains. Pendidikan IPA SPs Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia.
Hou, W., Komlodi, A., Lutters, W., Hercegfi, K., Preece, J. J., & Druin, A. J. (2015).
Supporting children’s online identity in international communities. Behaviour &
Information Technology, 34(4), 375–391.

Kearney, C. J. (2013). Friendship quality, Facebook and self-concept: Social networking

and adolescent development. Dissertation Abstracts International, 73.

Kornfield, R., Smith, K. C., Szczypka, G., Vera, L., & Emery, S. (2015). Earned media
and public engagement with CDC’s “tips from former smokers” campaign: An analysis
of online news and blog coverage. Journal of Medical Internet Research,.

Liu, C., Ang, R. P., & Lwin, M. O. (2013). Cognitive, personality, and social factors
associated with adolescents’ online personal information disclosure. Journal of
Adolescence, 36, 629–638.

Miller, D., Sinanan, J., Wang, X., McDonald, T., Haynes, N., Costa, E., ... & Nicolescu,
R. (2016). How the world changed social media (p. 286). UCL press.

Wood, M. A., Bukowski, W. M., & Lis, E. (2016). The digital self: How social media
serves as a setting that shapes youth’s emotional experiences. Adolescent Research
Review, 1(2), 163-173.

Yang, C. C., & Brown, B. B. (2013). Motives for using Facebook, patterns of Facebook
activities, and late adolescents’ social adjustment to college. Journal of Youth and
Adolescence, 42(3), 403–416.