How Social Media Affects Teenagers' Lives

Hi there! My name’s Catherine. I’m a 7A student from Sekolah Harapan Bangsa Modernland. I am going to share with you my opinion on how social media has affected teenagers’ lives.

As you all know, we can see that a lot of teenagers have changed so much because of social media, and most of those changes are negative changes.

Social media was invented to help humans communicate easier with people far from them. Without social media, it would be really hard for humans to communicate with other people around the world. Imagine, in this era, that we don’t have social media yet. Everyone would still have to use handwritten mails, telegrams and stuff like that, which need a really long time to be sent compared to social media. Chats in social media can be sent only in several seconds. Thus, social media is a very efficient ways to communicate. It also doesn’t need a lot of money to send.

But, of course, besides all those advantages, social media has some negative impact on people using it, too. A lot of people easily get addicted to it. They can’t stop playing with their phones because of social media. Teenagers talk with their friends too much, ignoring their main responsibility as students which is to learn and study. The more addicted people get, their minds are set to think that studying and learning aren’t important anymore. What they think are totally wrong. Social media can wait. Studying and learning can’t. If you don’t study and learn properly starting now, when will you? Studying and learning will be very useful in the future for all of our lives. As students and teenagers, not many of us have felt that learning is useful, but believe me, once you grow up and become an adult, it will be very useful.

Besides that, another negative change we can find in teenagers’ lives, because of social media,  is that their characters or behaviors change… and they aren’t just small changes, they are big changes. Some teenagers look at social media and have seen a lot of bad examples. Teenagers are really easily (as we say), ‘contaminated’ by their environment. If their social media environment is a bad environment, they will be easily influenced. A lot of teenagers have seen a lot of people saying bad words, doing bad things, and stuff like that in social media. Then, they will say those bad words to their friends, older people, and even strangers. For example, if their friends make a mistake, they’ll just call them names that aren’t really good to hear. Their friends may not feel good, and fights may happen. Besides that, they may also say bad words to their parents, which will definitely dissapoint and make their parents upset. We, as teenagers, definitely do not want to dissapoint the ones who have  cared for us all these years, do we?

Another negative impact is when some kids use their social media they don’t only chat. Some of them look at pictures that little kids aren’t allowed to look at. That gives negative impact to kids these days. This is absolutely a negative thing.

Another important negative impact I’m going to talk about is, a lot of kids, and teenagers have been into a lot of accidents caused by social media recently. For example, a lot of small kids got kidnapped, because kidnappers can see people’s location using social media.

The last negative impact I’m going to talk about is, how social media lets humans talk easily with those far away from them, but also makes humans not care about those near them. Social media was invented to let humans communicate with those far from them. Well, it worked. In this era, people don’t have to spend a lot of time and money to send messages, even to the furthest places in the world. But, social media also made humans become too concentrated on the world that’s far from them, and not concentrate on the people and environment near them. This is a really bad impact caused by social media.

These are some of the negative impacts caused by social media. But, a problem always has its solution. There is also a solution for us to solve this problem. There are ways to minimize these negative impacts.

One of the things we can do to minimize the negative impacts are, don’t be too concentrated in playing social media. I don’t mean people cannot use social media. They absolutely can. But, you have to have your personal limit. Do not use social media too much, because it will make you addicted, which also makes you lazy, and makes you ignore all the work you need to do. Only use social media if you need to.

The second thing you can do is, besides focusing on the environment far from you, also focus on the environment near you. Go out, make friends. Make friends not only in social media. Make friends that you can meet face to face, too. Go out, help out. Help those who need your help. There are lots of things you can do besides sit, open your phone or your computer, and use your social media. Let’s become a useful, kind and helpful person!

In the future, I am really hoping to see a lot of changes. I want to see a lot of teenagers going out, making friends, helping those in need, exploring the world, and doing a lot of activities like playing with their friends. Not playing video games, though!

That’s all I want to share:) Thank you so much for reading, and enjoy the rest of your day! May God bless us all:)

By: Catherine

Sekolah Harapan Bangsa Modernland grade 7A