Human beings are social creatures by nature. We have a natural impulse to relate among us in order to meet various needs, including emotional necessities. The novelty is that the capacity of human associations is being enhanced and shaped by technological advances nowadays, which have allowed us, among other possibilities, to connect with others without the limits of time and space. Particularly, adolescents are the wide users of internet and the social media. Indeed, in recent years there has been an increase of socialization through the cyberspace with a striking tendency in young people preferring interactions in social networks rather than face-to-face relationships. Online interactions are being widely used as a substitute of meeting friends …show more content…
As Roberts and Mroczek (2008) pointed out, personality traits and general personality are susceptible to change depending on environmental factors and experiences along the person’s life. Thus, the self-concept is a fluid identity that is continually adjusting to the environment and changes throughout the lifespan. It is composed by two entities, the “real self” and the “ideal self.” Normally, in our daily life there are not many differences between who we are and who we would like to be. But in internet, this gap can take even greater proportions because people can choose those features they want to show to others. Social networks such as Facebook allow us to build and rebuild our public self or best self, matching our ideal self. Once we make this public profile, social media acts as a mirror of ourselves, a mirror that we manage and with which we set up our self-presentation. Several studies have found that adolescent girls often use gender stereotypes in their presentations online and try to look attractive, in the same way that teenager boys want to show their more masculinized features. Although men increasingly receive more pressure to self-present themselves as attractive, girls tend to exhibit a more sexualized presentation and to be more expressive than boys in the social networks. Thus, this online self-presentation meets …show more content…
For example, teenagers that do not receive as much perceived acceptance through social media such as receiving more comments or likes, will experience lower self-esteem because there is an incongruence between what they think they should be receiving and the feedback they are actually obtaining. In addition, recent studies show several mental disorders that correlate with the use of internet and social media such as addiction to internet, narcissistic personality, cyberbullying, and depression in the youth. Indeed, Steiger and colleagues (2014) found that lower self-esteem in teenagers actually predicts depression in adulthood. Thus, it is important to be careful with the impact of social media in the self-esteem of youth because it can cause other mental health outcomes later on in life, especially in minorities. However, Meyer (2015) showed that resilience is build up in all of us, particularly in minorities that have been exposed to minority stress. As psychologists, is important that we focus on the interpersonal conflicts our patients are experiencing, obtaining information from collateral sources. Oltmanns and Turkheimer (2009) pointed out that most personality disorders are related to interpersonal conflict. Thus, third-party informants can provide psychologists with important information
Many young girls are aware that what they are doing on the internet can be seen by others and it can lead to positive or negative reactions from their peers. Orenstein is concerned about younger girls and women and how social media could take a bad turn on things for them. She wants us to know that social media can damage one’s reputation depending on how it is used. Girls post pictures of themselves on the internet in order to attract positive attention from their peers, as well as others who are considered as strangers. They want to be able to seek the attention from others in order to create an audience. As a result of this, Facebook is then used as a “social norm”, meaning that people can judge and form opinions based off of what is seen in an online profile. Orenstein explains that she isn’t trying to put technology in a bad light, because she uses it to keep in contact with her friends and family. She’s mindful about what she puts on the internet, while young adults are making their identities into a
Social media has become one of the most popular sources of communication for the upcoming generation. For young people growing up in today’s society, social media outlets such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have provided pictures and news that have become the first thing that their eyes see in the morning and the last thing that they see before bed. These pictures have provided unrealistic standards as to what is considered beautiful in today’s society. As young people refer to these images as a form of comparison, it has created harmful circumstances. These influences on the lives of young people have forced them to take extreme measures and in some cases, has been the cause of death. Social media in today’s society has proven to have a negative impact on the way young people, specifically females, view their bodies. Unrealistic beauty standards, dangerous comparisons and disorders have all been a result to the increase in social media and the impact that it has on the lives of young people.
Staple’s study indicates that adolescents are in isolation when socializing via internet. Socializing through social media comes with a cost, such as lack of physical interactions with friends and loved ones. The author finds communicating with technology can effect a family and other relationships. The lack of adolescent’s social skills starts with the inability to experience person-to-person conversations. Person-to-person conversations give children the ability to hear, and see, contrasting socializing via internet.
The University of Salford in the UK did a study last year on social media’s effects on self-esteem and anxiety, and reported that 50% of their 298 participants said that their “use of social networks like Facebook and Twitter makes their lives worse”. (Medical Daily) The study also reported that participants said ...
Texting, the internet, and social networking connect many people with those otherwise unavailable to them. However, the connection is less personal, and more tenuous than real social encounters. As technology advances greater numbers of teens expose themselves to risk of predation, stunted social skills, and a skewed view of the physical world. The speed of electronic communication and the abundance of readily available information are the internet’s greatest strengths and threats, many lack ability to distinguish between the fact and fiction that abounds in cyber-space. Allowing teens to find their unique identity is crucial but should not be done in a vacuum of parental supervision or genuine social interaction.
How the social networking influents young people’s psychological well-being? Since the World Wide Web appeared in the world in the year of 1991, the internet has significantly changed people’s life on almost every level. Especially when the social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, became popular during the last decade, people’s lifestyles have greatly changed by this form of communication, which consequently brings many psychological effects on the young people. As the result, according to the recent researches, the teenagers and the young adults in this era are bearing many mental health problems, such as depression, anxiety, and addiction, due to the social
Various electronics are frequently used to go on pointless websites, such as Twitter and Facebook, which ruin society’s social abilities. More and more people use social media on the internet as a communication source. This does not apply merely to kids and teens, but adults as well. Using these sorts of websites as a way of communicating causes many individuals’ social skills to decrease. A plethora of children and teens would rather stay inside and interact with their friends through the internet than go hang out with them. Before technology people were not afraid to go up to a random person and talk to them. Now many friendships form through the internet and these friendships are not genuine. When these “friends” meet in person, they find nothing to talk about. For example, I remember after watching Perks of being a Wallflower, a movie taking place in the early nineties, my friends and I discussed how all the characters communicated in person and during hanging out they played games and talked. Now...
According to Tufts University social media refers to the means of interactions among people in which they create, share, and/or exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and networks (www.tufts.edu). Current research indicates that there is a connection between increased social media use and deteriorated mental health. Unfortunately, young adults, the most active social media users, have a predominantly high risk for developing mental health issues, making this connection particularly concerning. Many lives may change to fit the mold of social media, and it may be consuming to the extent that one would miss out on real life scenarios in their immediate surroundings. It turns
One of the most concerning effects of social media is depression. When teens create an online identity, they are often displaying an unauthentic self. This “other” self is often what the person wants to be like. Having to jump from the online self to the real self can often lead to depression. In an article in the Huffington Post, Dr. Jim Taylor calls this Facebook depression. The American Academy of Pediatrics states that “Researchers have proposed a new phenomenon called “Facebook depression,” defined as depression that develops when preteens and teens spend a great deal of time on social media sites, such as Facebook, and then begin to exhibit classic symptoms of depression.” (802). Facebook and other social media outlets create an almost high school-like environment outside of school where the teen has to strive for acceptance as well. Dr. Moreno tells the New York Times that ...
“I didn't know what Facebook was, and now that I do know what it is, I have to say, it sounds like a huge waste of time –Betty White (“Betty White Quotes,” 2014, para. 1).” This quote can be interpreted to fit with several of the social media avenues that many people spend their time on. Day in and day out people post, tweet, share, and pin countless times throughout the world. These different forms of communication were first created for an easier way for people to connect with others. Yet now, so much time is spent on these social sites that it has warped the interactive part and is causing more damage than good. Many are growing a desire and are living for the amount of “likes” they can receive on a post or how many re-tweets they can generate. Instead of going to these outlets to participate in a partial portion of their social lives, people are filling that time with the technological aspect of communication. As White said, this can become an inordinate amount of wasted time and can ultimately grow into further damaging circumstances. These different social media channels can cause emotional harm through disparaging the relationship between friends, conjuring of a narcissistic personality, and the retrogradation of ones self-esteem.
The human need for affiliation creates the challenges and rewards of finding acquaintances, forming close friendships, as well as intimate relationships. Through technological advances cyberspace, or the internet, has become a place of multiple opportunities for people to be able to fulfill that need for affiliation. Websites, chat rooms, and online communities are just some examples of virtual platforms for people to seek others, come together, and find that special someone. These opportunities can result in positive outcomes allowing people to achieve what or whom they were seeking, but they can also result in harm to themselves and others, resulting with damaging consequences. Cyberspace does not come with a warning label. People who use the internet as a means to seek relationships are at risk of being exposed to positive as well as negative results. Being made aware of some of those risks and dangers, and realizing that forming relationships on the internet is not all fun and games, may be ways to help promote a positive future for cyberspace as a place to form successful relationships.
Social media sites such as Facebook are one of the most popular social media sites that has 700,000-750,000 members joining each day. Connecting with peers shouldn’t be a problem. It’s as easy typing the peers name push search, and some suggestions come up and find your peer you’re looking for and shoot them a message instantly with social media manly targeting young people such as teenagers. Facebook has made it so easy for teens to interact and engage with their peers. It allows teens to come into contact with long, lost relatives and reunite with them. Facebook is a virtual site = which gives teens an endless possibility to engage with peers, family, of maybe even people who they have never meet allowing then to interact making new friends.
According to the article, “10 Ways Social Media Affects Our Mental Problems,” Degreed claim that social media make us restless by “two-thirds admitted to having difficulty relaxing when unable to use their social media accounts.” Teenagers are always tired when they have to stay up late at night to catch up with all the news feed on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter that make them have no energy to go on the next day. Based on the newspaper, “Excessive Social Media Use Harms Children’s Mental Health,” by the Telegraph shows that “children who go on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for more than three hours a day are more likely to have mental health problems.” Social media can lead to bullying that affects teenagers mental health issue and being stressed. Social media have now taken a part of human life and some are addicted to the point where they can’t even live without
Several decades ago, communications philosopher Marshall McLuhan spoke about the development of the Global Village and how the evolution of new technologies would help connect people on opposite sides of the world, creating online communities that would break boundaries and borders. While this change has been recognized, so too has the idea explored by his successors in which while individuals were expected to look at others in the world through a telescope, they have alternatively developed the tendency to look at themselves through a microscope. As the era of worldwide connectivity began, so did the era of ‘me, me, me’. Both the hardware and the software of the new millennium, inclusive of the iPhone’s forward-facing camera, and apps that allow one to fix blemishes and whiten teeth, have adapted to allow this change to an inward focus. While this has certainly caught on, it has also begun to cause a lot of problems. The act of posting about the self began to be seen as a negatively self-centered one when Facebook NewsFeeds were filled with egotistic stories and ‘Selfies,’ photos of the self. Shortly after, the application Instagram was created, where the occurrence of the Selfie was magnified to a greater degree. This intensive focus inward, and the way these pieces of media are shared, have made some individuals reliant on the positive expressions of others for self-confidence and social approval. When self-esteem is intertwined with how many ‘likes’ a photo gets on a mobile application, we start to see a shift in how self-awareness is formed, what people will do for this approval, and how some will react to a lack of attention.
Research conducted before two-thousand and ten constituted positive effects that social media had on interpersonal communication. The researchers came to the conclusion that social media, in its early days, strengthened social interaction between family, friends, co-workers and even online strangers. In a two-thousand and nine study on social media and its effects on how it may cultivate friendship in online schooling, Barbour concludes that ‘the use of the "Odyssey of the Mind" social network the students at this cyber school are able to receive a social experience that may not be the same as the one they would receive in a traditional school, but appears to be an equivalent experience" (59). He states that social media can help foster relationships between people if they don 't have that everyday social interaction. That is if people would use safe and friendly social networking practices. Research conducted after two-thousand and ten found that social media could actually be harming interpersonal relationships. Specifically, in regards to young adults and social media, studies show that nowadays, "young adults are experiencing a significantly high amount of cyberbullying victimization" (Peluchette 435). Scholarly conversations of today insist that instead of utilizing the social networking sites to create strong personal bonds, the youth of today use social media to cyberbully their friends and peers, negatively affecting interpersonal relationships between