The Effect of Overexposure to Social Media on the Social Development of Children Today

Today's youth is surrounded by electronics and technology now plays a major role in the “growing up” and development of young adolescents. Social media outlets, such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram have become the centerpiece of the lives of everybody, in today's society, including these adolescents during their time of development. Parents have to begin to wonder what the effects of this popular and new medium of interpersonal social interaction has on the physical conditioning, emotional development, and cognitive development of young adolescents. Social media's negative impact in the upbringing of these children cause the health issues that the children may be susceptible to, the psychological and brain effects, and their actual social life that is not on social media. Using the qualitative and qualitative data that has been found, the impact of social media on the mental and social development is that it causes for children to become more susceptible to group think and having less of an ability to make personal decisions independent from what the majority of their friends want to do. Social media, in addition, causes for the children being able to form stable relationships with others. The increasing effects of social media on the development of school aged children has led to many students becoming less interested in their school studies and spending less time learning and reading and more time on these websites. The effect of social media on the development of children is predominantly negative especially in regards to the mental and physical health of these children.
The effect that an over exposure to social media has on the social development of children in today's electronic age is negative in regards to the proces...

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...motional issues. Students are also seeing their studies dwindle because of the unbalance of time spent between being on the computer on social media websites and spending time working on classwork and reading. Even the physical conditioning of this current generation has fallen off drastically, with obesity and psychological health risks rising to new levels with this present generation. Overall, the various effects of social media are negative because of the amount of time that is spent on it, as the children have taken a tool and overused it to the point of dependance. For while social media does represent a great way to connect with others, outside of direct face to face connections, unfortunately young adolescents are relying on it too much as a crutch for social connection and are only hampering their interpersonal skills and limiting themselves in the long run.