How Media Affects Youth's Adolescence

    

    Media these days are used for mass communication and is used to gather data. For as we all know now has grown such impact to our society recently. Social Media's specifically are popular especially for teens. A report from a 2018 common sense media report found that 81% of teenagers use social media, and how social media sites are used multiple times within an hour. These statiscally rised dramatically for over 6 years which is driven by increased accessed to devices. These stats have been rising ever since which gives an impact on social media having a teen cognitive and a psychological well-being to society. (Alien, Summer 2019).


    There are postive and negative impacts of social media on the youth today. Positively social media the youth today can keep them updated about what's happening around the world, social media also gives such a positive impact and boundaries of communication for all around the world and can keep them connected to their friends and family despite how far they may be. Negatively tho, this leads most teenagers to isolation. It affects how they communicate and reduces face to face meet ups because they normally spend their time on online platforms. (Mageto, James 2017)


    As cited by Jeanille Cogtas (2015), Brody (2006) stated that american teenagers have no trouble in accesing inapropriate graphical content, and these teenagers are not even restricted from hearing inapropriate words from popular songs. From my understanding, these teenagers can access and get exposed to a lot of content that they aren't not suppose to see yet. These videos can either traumatize them or can affect their behavior and how they make decisions as they grow up.


    As cited by Ciranka, Simon & Bos, Wouter Van Den (2019), Steinburg (2008) mentioned that influences impact to most aspects of adolescent lives, just like how it affects their taste in music, clothing and to the more serious on how it may impact to the use of illicit drugs and it may engage unto unprotected sex. These riskier choices may carry consequences that may last for a life-long time and may bring significant cost to society. It is empirical that the presence of influences may cause risky behavior in adolescence. (Gardner and Steinburg, 2005; Chein et al., 2011: Pfeifer et al., 2011:Smith et al., 2014)


    This social media may also cause early marriage, from social communicating with other people around the world this may cause people mostly teens to start bad decision making such as online dating. This may cause them to marry early and start a new family. According to a study from Dahl, Gordon B. (2010) the previous research points to the social, family, health and financial outcomes are connected to the early teen marriage and low education.


    Woman who we're married while they we're in their teens have a chance to most likely get a divorce within 15 yrs of their wedding contract compared to the woman who postpone their marriage and added by Klepinger, Lundberg and Plotnick (1999); Ribar (1994), People who marry in their teens start to have more kids and to have them earlier. As teen marriage affects their education levels; woman who start marrying below the age of 10 are 50% most likely to drop out of their class and 4 times less guranteed to graduate from college.


    Social media has been partly used for forced marriage as well. Several youths that are still in their teens,, start with friendship and in which turns into love and when some parents may discover about this in their children, the uniresponsibly arrange a marriage in a hurry without the child's consent. (Kandya, Ranjith 2019)


    Youth these days use media as their source of information, fun and communication which in otherhand, affects the old generations these days for the old generation have lesser knowledge in understanding the digital life making some parents from the old generation unable to properly care, restrict and control their children.


    As stated by O’Donnel, Lauren M. (2018) youth are born to be naturally curious, so telling them what needs to be avoided and what has to be done would be one of the best options in making children understand you. Once you see something that is not right, you need to show them how it's not right for them to do that. So in this way, kids knowing the actions and consequences will help them in understanding what is restricted for them. It's best to never let your guard down despite of them knowing their restrictions. But also parents must know what shouldn't be good for their children and will have to care and reconsider about what they think about this and that.








References:


Ciranka, Simon & Bos, Wouter Van Den (2019, August 29) Social Influence in Adolescent Decision-Making: A Formal Framework. frontiersin.org. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01915/full

Alien, Summer (2019 September, 20) Social media's growing impact on our lives. apa.org. https://www.apa.org/members/content/social-media-research

Dahl, Gordon B. (2010, August) Early Teen Marriage and Future Poverty. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3000061/

O’Donnel, Lauren M. (2018, June) Disciplining Your Child. Kidshealth. https://kidshealth.org/en/parents/discipline.html

Mageto, James (2017) Impact of Social Media on the Youth. Grin. https://www.grin.com/document/358350

Kandya, Ranjith (2019, May 9) Child marriages caused by social media worry officials. deccanherald. https://www.deccanherald.com/state/mysuru/child-marriages-caused-by-social-media-worry-officials-732837.html

Cogtas, Jeanille B. (2015, June 18) Media, Adolescence, Marriage. Blogger. https://jeanillec.blogspot.com/2015/06/media-adolescence-marriage.html