Social media is a new media platform that has an impact on our society. Social media is a computer-based technology that facilitates the sharing of ideas, thoughts, and information through virtual networks and communities in the form of websites and applications that let users create, share, and interact using social networking. As a result, anyone can freely create their own content and share it on social media. On social media today, there are seven types of content: educational, inspirational, interactive, connecting, promotional, newsworthy, and entertaining.
Most children will concentrate on educational and entertaining content. The entertaining content has many kinds of content, so some contents are inappropriate for children, and they don’t have enough judgement to understand all the contents on social media. Sometimes, parents cannot follow all the content on social media, so it is easy for inappropriate media to approach children by using applications. The applications through which children can receive unsuitable content are YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Line, Twitter, and sometimes the comic applications.
It’s a difficult problem for many parents to deal with, especially given how quickly social media can reach their children in inappropriate ways. Some parents also don’t follow the new media, and they won’t understand the new generation. So, it can create family problems and family violence in both physical and mental ways.
Families impacted
The ways that teenagers use the words can make parents get confused because some words that teenagers use are new words for this generation to understand. So, it is important for parents to follow the trend of teenagers and to approach and understand their children easily.
I mentioned already that families can get negative effects from social media. Because children in the adolescent age range are more focused on social media than on real life, They will use their phones to communicate with their friends and will spend more time on their phones than they will with their parents or family. Some parents will not understand them. Why are they always looking at their phones and punishing their children in inappropriate ways? Take their phones, hit their children, and take their pocket money. For example, if parents use those penalties along with their own, it will cause much conflict between teenagers and parents. Teenagers will think that their parents don’t love them and spend more time on social media. The reason why children become phone addicts is because teenagers can have self-expression on social media, post their own pictures, and create their own contents on their personal accounts on social media applications such as Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. The second reason is social influence, because the majority of theirfriends communicate via phone, or what you might call “an online community.” On social media, teenagers can make new friends and form new relationships, as well as form online friendships. Another reason is variety of use, smartphones will have many functions from different applications such as Live, the camera, games, Messenger, music, video, etc. And lastly, for self-gratification, smartphones have many applications, so they can satisfy what children need and are interested in. Phones can help teenagers avoid boredom.
Phone addiction
When children become addicted to their phones, it becomes difficult for parents to communicate with and understand their children, potentially widening the gap between parents and teenagers. When parents use the penalty with their children, it will affect their physical and mental health. In the physical world, if parents hit them or use some violence, children will get hurt and get some wounds. It can continue to cause mental problems because it hurts children’s feelings. This could be considered “family violence,” as parents are also injured. If parents want to stop family violence, they should talk about it, listen to their children, and use logic to solve problems rather than using power and harsh penalties. Some parents do not listen to their children and instead use their parental authority to shape their children’s lives. It is not wrong for parents to teach their children in the same way that they were taught, but as time has passed, so has the generation of children. Teenagers think differently now than they did in the past. As a result, if parents want to teach their children, they should follow the generation of today and try to understand their children better by using property words that do not require power or energy.
The ways that teenagers use the words can make parents get confused because some words that teenagers use are new words for this generation to understand. So, it is important for parents to follow the trend of teenagers and to approach and understand their children easily.
Content on social media
In the age of teenagers, most of the contents are all about themselves, in the sense that they want to represent their self-esteem and want to be cool, beautiful, and friendly. because they make themselves the center of attention. Therefore, influencers or actors will become the idols of teenagers. Moreover, on social media, there are many categories of celebrities and influencers, such as funny, sexy, cute, beautiful, and handsome. Celebrities will always create content that matches themselves. So, if teenagers have sexy celebrities as their idols, they will change themselves to become more sexy by using their bodies. The way they dress and their style of taking pictures will indicate inappropriate clothing. When they share their pictures, they will get more interest from other people. Because people nowadays are more interested in sex and precarious content. The precarious contents are spread out around social media; therefore, it is easy for children to reach those kinds of contents. Furthermore, precarious contents are dangerous for teenagers who don’t have enough judgment and cannot reflect on the problems that will follow next. Some people in Thai society are sensitive to sexual content and do not support teenagers’ approaches to these contents because of their age. The news in society also has many problems with sexual violence that are viral and do not have proper solutions.
Sexy content Teenagers who want to create sexy content are likely to face sexual harassment from others. People who oppose sexy content will have a negative perception of children who serve themselves in this manner.
On social media, everyone can comment and share their ideas with creators with bad words, no manners, and no media ethics. The negative comments can make the creator feel bad about themselves. It is called cyberbullying. There are many case studies in the news about cyberbullying for teenagers, and the majority of these teenagers end up with this problem by committing suicide or developing mental illnesses such as depression, lack of self-confidence, and hallucinations.
Cyberbullying
People’s main focus for cyberbullying will be gender or sexual harassment. Our society now has more gender freedom, but there are still some people who are racist toward LGBTQ people. For example, cyberbullying on society about sexual harassment, racism against another gender, and dismissing it as a joke and ridicule is disgraceful. Sexual assault in the form of a remark about another sexual organ or body shaming Intimidation, which is also a type of sexual harassment or revenge porn, means that the person seeking vengeance will share a pornographic image of the intimidated person. For example, if a man and a woman break up, the man will post a picture of the woman online to exact revenge and humiliate the woman. When cybersexual harassment occurs, attackers want victims to feel as if they have no place in society. The majority of sexual harassment cases occur in adolescents who have excessive self-esteem on social media, and social media is the most powerful influence in their lives.
Sometimes, on social media, the revenger can also create fake news to bully the victim. Fake news is news that everyone believes in the news because viewers believe what they see in the media and follow the creator’s comment or idea. As a result, audiences who use social media cannot rely on every piece of news they see in the media. Sometimes fake news is good for advertising business, and teenagers who understand this well enough will believe those fake advertisements.
Online market
Online markets are also dangerous to children because social media makes them global and free. Therefore, teenagers can easily get addictive substances such as cigarettes, electric cigarettes, cannabis, and drugs. Because the online market also has black markets that are illegal, Especially electric cigarettes, because most students in their teen years will use this type of cigarette at school, which is also harmful to our health. On social media, it also has a video clip of the adolescents who smoke electric cigarettes and share this content on their personal accounts on Instagram or Facebook. They will think that it is cool and can make other people pay attention to them. When they become addicted to electric cigarettes, they will progress from the electric to the real cigarette, and then to other drugs. There are many drugs that sell on the online market. It can be in the form of a weight-loss supplement, vitamins, or medicine that is not nutritional. Addictive substances are the most effective for the physical and mental health of teenagers. It can cause teenagers to become more aggressive and use more violence with other people, in both the words that they speak and their actions.
By the way, social media has become the most influential medium for children in this generation. It is useful for everyone in this period because social media can make new connections with other people easily, be used to follow the news, and be used to decrease boredom. If you use social media with critical thinking, that is rare among teenagers. Most adolescent children will use social media for emotional reasons rather than for educational purposes. They will be careless about judgment. As a result, using the news media during adolescence can have a variety of negative consequences. Adolescence needs more education on how to use social media correctly and with more critical thinking to create more creative content for a better life in the future. Teenagers who use inappropriately, on the other hand, will receive more negative feedback in the future, making it difficult for them to achieve positive outcomes.
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