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The Impact of Social Media on Adolescents

In: Social Issues

Submitted By hagedorns4
Words 1650
Pages 7
The Impact of Social Media on Adolescents
ILR 260
National University

The emergence of social media has forever changed the way users interact with each other. Facebook became public in September of 2006, when it expanded its membership to any user 13 years and older instead of its exclusive University and High School members (History of Facebook, 2014). Twitter was created in 2006, but did not gain popularity until 2012 (Twitter, 2014). Today, there are many social media sites today, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, etc. With so many options around the world for social media apps, adolescents are being targeted to join these sites and mobile apps. There are many positive aspects of the social media, but there are many negative aspects from the use of social media. What impact is social media having on adolescents? Is the use of social media affecting their ability to form personal relationships or learn valuable communication skills to use later in life? Is social media affecting adolescent’s fragile mental states, causing more mental health issues? Being a teen is hard enough as it is without adding the additional stress that social media is bringing to the table. “Daily excessive use of media and technology has been linked to negative effects on mental health of teens” (Rosen, 2011). Social media has exploded in recent years and continues to grow. According to a clinical report from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), from 2006 to 2011 there has been a huge increase in social networking site use by adolescents (O’Keeffe and Clarke-Pearson, 2011). Figure 1 shown below, shows which social networking sites are popular with teens in 2011-2012.

Where Teens Have Social Media Profiles or Accounts (%)

Figure 1: Where Teens Have Social Media Profiles or Accounts (%). Data Source: Pew Research Internet Project, "Teens Haven't Abandoned

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