Social networking sites reduces the net worth of children and teens The 21st century undoubtedly has become the era of technology; creating a global village of tremendous communication, research and inventions. Today, the global north is easily linked to the global south opening up a range of opportunities in the transport industry, economic interaction, media and publicity, cooperate governance and even socialization through social media. The concept of social media has revolutionized the way children and teenagers communicate and stay in touch with friends, relatives and close families, learning, information sharing, making virtual friends and creating a diverse world of people from different cultures around the globe and would never have met in a lifetime. The proliferation of social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter has enabled children and youth to express themselves and make new beneficial connections quickly. It seem appropriate therefore to mention in few lines about how I personally feel about social media and what it has done for me. I definitely love being in my own space most of the time, within my own space, and alone, in this sense social media has provided the opportunity for me to interact without being in physical proximity with the person/persons. I appreciate this type of interaction as it saves me the awkwardness and strain I feel when meeting new people face to face. Moreover I can now shop online without leaving the confines of my home not to talk of being able to complete academic works without working around with tons of books. My computer has become my best friend. In the words of Deborah Lupton in her article The Embodied Computer; “I am face to face with my computer for far longer than I look into any Human’s face” “I have an emotional relationship with my computer”(Lupton 1995 p1). Despite this, an argument can be made that social media is putting the future of the children and teens at risk, in the process reducing their value to society. The Video Presentation, Poke Me: How Social Media Networks can both help and harm our kids” by Dr. Larry Rosen examines social medium specifically networks, the impact on children and teens in its present form and why it does more harm than good to for them. This paper will attempt to analyze these cons and the effects on children and Teens lives. It will posit that the measures in place to protect the younger generation are not sufficient.
While social networking helps kids to express themselves, a quality needed in a multicultural global world where personal branding is becoming as important, more than commercial branding, ere is a tendency for the younger generation to become more narcissistic the more they use social networking sites. This view is supported by research conducted by Professor Larry Rosen of California State University (American Psychological Association, 2011). Narcissism is a personality disorder in which an individual sufferers from unreasonably self-obsessed and lack empathy for the plight of others. “Narcissistic people do not only unduly have self-importance, but more tellingly, they are prone to detest criticism in whatever form and are likely to do unethical things to achieve what they want including hurting the feelings of others” (Pub Med Health, 2012, p2).
In children, such a disorder would impact negatively on interactions with other children made to the suffering by throwing tantrums when the disorder child does not get his way. No parent will be happy to see their children excluded from school activities or even school altogether, but one of the symptoms of narcissism, which is aggressive behavior, is one of the main reasons children are expelled from school. The same could be said of teenagers. At their age, narcissism could affect their employability as organizations generally place a great deal of emphasis on team work, empathy and customer service. These skills require employees to be relatively selfless, putting the needs of others on at least an equal footing with theirs. Narcissistic children and teens therefore run the risk of not being affected in their current surroundings and risk a future where they might struggle to find meaningful employment. The worry is that as the use of social media undoubtedly becomes as embedded as viewing television for all kids, society is faced with an increasing amount of narcissistic people whose value to society would be confined to what they can do for themselves through what they see, hear or learn from their daily social media activities that goes uncensored.
There are also other psychological and physical health risk elements attached to the proliferation of social media. Professor Rosen stated that “excessive use of social networking sites negatively affects the health of children and teenagers, among others” (American Psychological Association, 2011,). According to the Professor, they are likely to suffer from depression, anxiety and are more likely to suffer from future health problems. Health related problems are bound to affect children and their learning opportunities. For example, they will miss days from school which might impact on their accumulation and skills for future years. As these healths related problems continue in later years, it would increase absenteeism from the workplace. Considering that the higher the rate of absenteeism, the less the productivity of a worker generally, then it is clear that the value contributed by children and teenagers adversely affected by excessive use of social media would be lessened.
Social networking sites also affect the concentration and learning of the younger generation negatively if excessively used. They can be distracting, affect their motivation and can make them procrastinate. Recent studies have shown that children and teenagers who ‘checked Facebook at least once during a 15 minute study period achieved lower grades’ (American Psychological Association, 2011). Another study conducted by de Villiers (2010), found that “less than 5 percent of university students use Facebook for learning purposes”. One can therefore argue that with the time spent on Facebook eats into the time that should be used to carry out studies. Ishfag and Tehmima,(2011) found that “children and teenagers addicted to social networking suffer motivational problems which are likely to affect how well they perform in their academic studies”. It is not difficult to understand why.
When one considers Maslow’s theory of motivation, he posits that people satisfy their needs in hierarchical order. After satisfying a lower order need, they then move on to the next one. These needs are physiological needs (need for survival), security, social/love, self-esteem and self-actualization needs (Lynch, 2009). For children and teenagers, it is clear that the first two needs are generally satisfied by the actions of their parents or guardians. This means that the next order of need, which is the one they can more directly satisfy themselves, is the social need. Social media helps them satisfied this need through their smartphones and pads, for example. With the rapid pace of technological developments it would appear that social needs are constantly unsatisfied as new sites and adaptions of existing sites spring up. Therefore, their quest for satisfying their insatiable needs is eating into the time that can be spent doing schoolwork.
There are too many options available. While many of the options are educational, as discussed above, children and teenagers are shunning these for non-productive purposes. One of the things that use of social networking sites help develop in children and teenagers is the ability to multitask, studies have shown (Naizabekov,2012). Multitasking is usually considered a positive attribute generally of the modern society. I would argue however, that not all multitasking is positive. If multitasking means instead of focusing on productive work, some time is spent on non-productive work, and excessively for that matter, then this type of multitasking is not beneficial. In the context of this paper, multitasking could involve listening to a teacher teach while at the same time text messaging and making status updates on Facebook. Studies back up my argument. For example, Fox et.al. (2008) found that excessive users of social networking sites during the course of their studies took longer to complete tests that others.
Indeed, social media has its positives for children and teenagers. For one, it can help the introverted open up in the comfort behind their screens. Using their smartphones and other devices, they can control their interaction and learn how to socialize better. However, I would argue that this is not a sufficient substitute to socializing in person. In the physical world, these kids would need to interact face to face in many instances to be able to influence others to achieve their goals and the goals of those they represent. While social media improves their level of social interaction, it does not address the bigger issue of using body language to achieve results, considering that body language is an important part of communication. There is also incidences of cyber bullying where unkind and abusive comments or compromising photos about someone can be easily disseminated. It is estimated that nine out of ten teenagers approximately have experienced someone being unkind to another in social networking sites (Naizabekov,2012).. One can only imagine the negative impact this can have on the introverted kid.
Another positive, as alluded to earlier, is that social media can provide innovative ways of teaching for children and teenagers (Boyd & Ellison, 2007). However, the qualities of these teaching aids are as effective as the use of them. For their benefits to be reaped there should be a way of engaging students to seek them out rather than indulging in less beneficial use.
Proponents of the benefits of social media also point that it is becoming better at creating a balance between maintaining a child’s privacy and enabling parents to monitor what their children are doing, for their safety and security. However, it is still easy for children to access these sites and communicate with others without the knowledge of their parents. For instance, on Facebook, it is still possible to send private messages and to send and receive messages from people not necessarily in friends’ list. Ill-meaning predators know that and would undoubtedly use these means to target vulnerable children and youths. Parents are not Omni-present. Therefore, it is inconceivable that they would be able to monitor the online activities of their kids round the clock.
For others they can connect with friends who have moved to other schools and areas and relatives (Boyd & Ellison, 2007). It helps to make new friends and more importantly develop networks that could prove beneficial in later years in terms of employment and business opportunities. It also makes the world a special place opening the younger generation to new cultures and ways of thinking. However, my argument is that social media in its present form creates more harm than good, which means that these benefits are outweighed by the positives. Parents and regulators wishing to redress the balance should not ignore the privacy element but can put greater emphasis of selling the benefits of social media to the young. It is not going to go away. The children are going to be leaders of the future. Therefore, solutions to the problems raised here should be centered around selling the benefits of social media to children, gaining their trust that the motive is to protect them rather than intrude on their privacy. As Professor Rosen notes ‘communication is the crux of parenting. You need to talk to your kids or rather listen to them’ (American Psychological Association, 2011). There is no one sized approach to addressing the negatives of social media. It is about the parents knowing their children and listening to them that will have tailor solutions to specific risks that they face in terms of their future value to society. References

American Psychological Association (2011). Social Networking’s good and bad impact on kids. APA (online).
Boyd, D. & Ellison, N. (2007). Social Networking Sites: definition, history and scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. 13(1), 210-225
De Villiers, R. (2010). Proceedings of Informing Science and IT Education Conference: academic use of a group on Facebook – initial findings and perceptions. Gauteng: University of South Africa
Fox, A., Rosen, J. & Crawford, M. (2008). Distractions, distractions: does instant messaging affect college students’ performance on a concurrent reading comprehension task? Cyber psychology and Behavior. 12, 51-53
Ishfag, A. & Tehmina, F. (2011). A look out for academic impacts of social networking sites (SNSs): a student based perspective. African Journal of Business Management. 5(12), 5022-5031
Naizabekov, S. (2012). Negative impact of social networking sites on academic performance of students. Nazarbayev University.
Pub Med Health (2012). Narcissistic personality disorders. Available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001930/ Retrieved March 2013
The Embodied Computer/User. (Lupton,1995)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhL2H0BirRo