You cannot stop your kids from using social media. Sometimes, even if teens don’t want to be on social media, they have to be, for some reason, for instance, getting updates of their schools.
Social media has been a great blessing for every human being as it has helped us connect with our friends and family from all over the world. It has enabled communication and helped people in their careers.
Many teenagers are building their careers through social media. If used wisely, social media can be a blessing among teenagers. But, there are several negative effects of social media on teenagers.
10 Negative Effects of Social Media on Teenagers
Talking about social media and kids, instead of using social media properly, they are misusing it. Due to excessive misuse of social media, there are negative effects of social media on teenagers. Here, are some of the negative impact of social media.
1. Social Media Addiction
Trust me, social media usage among teenagers is no less than drug addiction. Once your kids are into social media addiction, it becomes pretty impossible to bring back to everyday life.
These days every teen owns at least one social media account. And they try to be active on their social media at least one time a day. But if your teen tries to check their social media all the time and cannot stop thinking about their social media, there is a high probability of teens getting addicted.
If your teen shows signs like trying to be active all the time or starts to feel restless without social media, then they can be addicted to social media.
2. Social Distraction
Even though social media is meant to connect people, it is not true as it sounds despite their physical distance. Social media is increasing physical distance among people who are nearby.
You may have sometimes yelled at your teen to be present at some family function instead of talking with someone on social media. Even though your teen is present in the function, they isolate themselves from others. These are the common symptoms that you can find if your kid is addicted to social media. It is one of the major drawbacks of social media.
You can find the negative effects of social media on teenagers along with adults. You can see many adults prefer to be on their phones once they are back from home. And in fact, they even do not share things that happened with them throughout the day; instead, they post them online.
3. Reduces Interpersonal Skills
Another negative effects of social media on teenagers is a lack of interpersonal skills. If your teen prefers to text instead of having face-to-face communication, then you need to be aware of it.
You cannot stop your teen from communicating through social media in this digital world. But you have to be careful to what extent they use their device to communicate with their peers, cousins, or other family members.
Using social media to communicate reduces your teenagers’ confidence, and they start to feel awkward and shy when they speak to the person in real life.
Teenage is the most crucial age where teens can get confident and build their personality. But, social media can be one of the hindrances for their interpersonal skills if teens depend on social media to communicate.
4. Lower Self-esteem
In social media, teens meet people from all around the world. They look up to celebrities, bloggers, influencers, and even their peers’ profiles and pictures, and they fall into social comparisons.
During teenage, children have lots of physical changes, and sometimes they even get ashamed of their bodies. On top of that, teenagers start to feel inferior when they look up to celebrities with a well-maintained, slim body, “zero-size” body.
During this phase, if they continue to look up to social media personalities instead of accepting who they are, it can lower self-esteem. In terms of physical appearance, female teens are more conscious than male teens.
5. Low Concentration
During teenage years, teenagers need to focus on their studies and career more than anything else, and they should concentrate on their studies to get good marks and make their career.
But now, you can see most teenagers are indulging in social media so much that they forget to focus on the essential aspect of their life. Many teens open at least one of their social media no matter what they do.
You may have seen your teen opening their social media while doing homework. Now you must be wondering how they can concentrate by multitasking. Even though they seem like they can focus by multitasking, in reality, they cannot focus on their work.
Likewise, even in school, teenagers might gossip or think about their social media when the teacher is teaching, which will eventually lose their concentration from their studies.
6. Cyberbullying
In this media world, the cases of cyberbullying are skyrocketing. Teenagers are moving from bullying physically to bullying virtually due to social media. Social media has been their most preferred platform for teens bullying their peers.
Social media has made cyberbullying a lot easier; teenagers who create fake accounts have to bully their peers. They are even blackmailing and threatening teenagers for their benefit.
According to research, 34% of students have faced cyberbullying in their lifetime.”
You should teach cybersecurity to teenagers as they have faced cyberbullying on social media and have difficulty trusting people in their real lives. They will also face issues like loneliness, stress, fear of missing, anxiety and depression.
Both the bully and the victim are having adverse effects. The bully moves towards the wrong track, and the victim has lifetime trauma.
7. Anxiety and Depression
Teenagers who spend more time on social media are likely to face psychological effects like anxiety and depression. Teenagers feel constant pressure to be active on social media. And when they are not able to be online, they start to feel “fear of missing out.”
If your teen feels restless or stressed out every time they are not on their social media, then you better watch out. It is one of the main symptoms of social media anxiety.
To prevent social media anxiety and depression among your teens, make sure they do not spend all their time on social media. It would help reduce their screen time and monitor your kid’s social media to oversee what they are doing on their devices. Allow your teen no more than an hour on social media.
8. Sleeplessness
Teenagers who have no restriction on using their phones, especially social media, can spend all night on their phones without getting bored. Most of the time, teenagers can extend their sleep hours to be on social media.
Social media can get so addictive that not just teens, even adults, can get excessively caught up with it. Even though adults can control themselves and maintain their sleep schedule, teenagers cannot do so.
Sometimes, teenagers can spend all their time on social media, either chatting with their peers or just scrolling. And the following day, they are not able to function correctly. In the worst case, if they have class early in the morning, they will not concentrate.
Many teenagers are being deprived of sleep due to social media. Also, social media affects sleep deprivation because of which teenagers are losing their concentration on their studies, and it is also affecting their mental health.
9. Impractical Expectation
Teens who are on social media can develop impractical expectations a lot. There are many influencers on social media that teenagers follow and even idolize. But one thing that teens might not be aware of is all the things that social media influencers tell might not be true.
Sometimes social media influencers can say things or promote products to earn. Teenagers get some impractical expectations by getting influenced by social media influencers.
Likewise, you can find many false ads and scams on social media that might not be true. Adults can quickly identify such scams but teenagers might not and develop impractical expectations.
10. Reduces Privacy
Another negative effect of social media on teenagers is a lack of privacy among teenagers. These days, teenagers update every second of their lives on their social media accounts. They post about every detail on their social media without being aware that the entire world can get access to it.
Even though teens delete whatever they post within a minute, it will remain on the internet forever. Due to excessive use of social media, teen privacy has been an increasing concern among parents.
You may have seen your teen posting whatever they are doing to whatever they are eating. They do not just share it with their friends; they share it with random strangers most of the time.
Conclusion
As you know, a coin has two sides, in the same way, everything has a positive and negative side. Because social media has some opposing sides, we cannot let our kids stop using it.
Many people are reaching the high because of social media. Hence, the effectiveness of social media depends on how we use them. There is no harm in using social media if teens use it properly. But if you feel fishy about your kid’s social media habits, you must monitor them before it is too late.
You need to monitor social media activities for safety and to discard negative effects of social media on teenagers. For monitoring your kid’s social media habits, you can use parental control apps like fenced.ai, Bark, Qustodio, etc.
