Age Restrictions on Social Media

Within this blog post I will be developing my further thoughts on the impact of social media and how it specifically influences children.

It can be considered that age restrictions could benefit social media, due to some of the content which can be accessed by anyone, via the internet. Therefore, it could be seen that by ensuring children wait until a certain age before they are granted access to these social media applications, it could protect them from viewing content which they are better off restricted from.

Already, social media applications have age restrictions. Such as twitter and Facebook which have age limits of 13 years old. However, if a child wants to create an account on these applications, who is under the age of 13, all they have to do is tick a box and fill in the correct information to falsely state that they are of age. These social medias obviously believe that these accounts should not be used by those under these ages, otherwise, they would not have any restrictions. Therefore, should they not consider being stricter when allowing access to these pages?

Could there not be a way for these applications to get their users who fit the restrictions, by being over the age of 13, to enter a cereal code from their ID and ensure that those using the medias are of age? I feel that this would ensure that children are being protected by the potential harms of social media, such as; bullying and other harms of social media which I have discussed within this blog.

However, it can also be seen that if we are creating age restrictions on social media due to their harms, should we even consider shutting down social media applications all together? If these tools are causing disruption so strong for those under the age of 13, can adults be trusted to post sensible and un-harmful content? This could be considered to solve a lot of problems, such as jealousy over who’s photo your partner has “liked” or who your friends indirect tweet was about.

Therefore, I feel that it can be seen that if age restrictions are to be set for social media accounts, it should also be considered their true worth and harms to civilisation.

Social Medias Influence on Image

Continuing the theme from my previous blogs, I will be discussing my thoughts on the influence of social media and its specific impact upon children.

It can also be seen that social media applications impact younger generations by influencing their image of people, including themselves, should look. This influence can be seen to have positive and negative effects of the younger generation.

Applications such as Facebook, Twitter, and especially Instagram, each have account which anyone can follow. These accounts can often be based on fitness. These accounts often post pictures of fit people, healthy foods, and exercise routines. It can be found that this is beneficial for younger people are it ensures that they are cautious of their weight and care about the way they look. It can be good for people from young ages to have a goal for which they would like to look like. Therefore, these accounts can be seen to be motivational tools to support people throughout weight loss or maintaining their image.

However, it can also be seen that these social media accounts can cause people to become addict and obsessed with their image. These accounts can also tend to be found to post altered photos of photo shopped women, who’s figures have been edited to look appealing for those following the social media accounts. This can cause people, especially children who don’t understand that the images have been modified, to obsesses over their bodies and become upset and frustrated over not looking like the fitness models in the pictures. Therefore, although these social media accounts can provide fitness inspiration and motivation for young people, they can also be seen to drive them into poor eating habits to lose weight and have the potential to cause them to develop eating disorders.

Therefore, we can see that social media accounts have the power to provide positive, as well as negative effects on the way which we view ourselves and how we think people should look.

Type again soon, Anna

Social Media Addiction

Continuing my theme of the investigation of the impact of social media on young people, within this blog, I will be discussing obsessions with social media.

As mobile phones and online applications such as social media are now such a common tool throughout day-to-day activities, it can be recognised that many of us are obsessed with social media. The first thing which we hear at the start of the day, and the last thing we see in the evening, tends to be our phones. Therefore, it can be seen that large quantities of the population are addicted to their mobile phones, especially for checking their social media applications.

It can be found that people are so addicted to their phones that they will repeatedly check their phones, even if they have not created alert of notification, just in case they have missed something. As well as doing this, people are obsessed with knowing everything on social media that they will repeatedly sit for lengthy hours, checking and updating their apps. This can be seen as an unhealthy addiction which causes us to waste a lot of time within our days, which could be spent doing other, more important and valuable things. Some people waste so much time on their phones that they cannot bring themselves to switch off from it. Their addictions are far too out of control to know when to stop refreshing their apps.

Therefore, it could be considered that perhaps social media addiction, is just as bad as other addictions such as alcohol and nicotine. There are now actually help groups which assist people with their obsessions with mobile phones and social media. I feel that this highlights exactly how big some people’s problems are with being obsessed with their mobile phones.

It is shocking now that people will spend great amounts of time talking with their friends via social media applications, then when they meet up with their friends in person, they continue to sit and talk to other people via their mobile phone. Therefore, it can be seen that spending time with friends it not the same as what it used to be. It is a shame that when you get to a friend’s house, most people now ask for the wifi code, before they get to ask their friends how they’re doing.

People can also be seen to become frustrated when they are without wifi, or are experiencing poor wifi connection. This can tend to infuriate those who are addicted to their phones and cause them to feel as though they are missing a part of their life. Therefore, in these situations it is clear to see that addictions to mobile phones and social media are out of hand and could potentially be causing people to lack face-to-face communication and real life interactions.

Therefore, we can see that mobile phone and social media is a real addiction which could be causing young people to live their life much differently to generations who have never experienced social media.

Type again soon, Anna

The Impact of Social Media on; Grammar and Puncuation

Following on from my last blog, and continuing the theme of how social media applications impact the way which young people interact, I will be discussing the impacts upon grammar and punctuation, by social media.

It can be seen that using instant messaging everyday has caused us to develop lazy vocabularies. This is due to language which is used throughout text such as slang, abbreviations and informal talk, between friends. It can be seen that due to performing textual communication such as these on day-to-day basis’s, it has caused our language capabilities to deteriorate and weaken throughout their usage. This is due to talking in these ways being our most regular way of writing word-based pieces, therefore, it seems normal to talk informally, when we should maybe really be talking formally. This could cause us grief throughout publishing pieces of text or contacting people who we don’t know on an informal basis, such as employers.

By contacting people who we don’t know, incorrectly, it could result in us as individuals to get into trouble or miss out on opportunities, due to having a poor knowledge on how to communicate with different people, in different ways. It is important that we have the ability to know how to recognise how to talk to certain people who we do and do not know.

However, by using messenger services and social media sites on day-to-day basis’s, it could also mean that we are improving our abilities within grammar and punctuation. This could be due to the fact that every day we are consuming and out-putting large quantities of textual based information. Therefore, by consuming so much text as well as out-putting, from young ages, it is likely that we are going to pick up on the appropriate ways to spell and use grammar from a young age.

However, it can also be seen that using social media application messengers such as whatsapp and facebook chat, can weaken our grammar such as spelling. By relying on tools such as “auto-correct” to ensure we are spelling things appropriately, it could cause us to have a poor understanding of the English language, or, whatever language you speak. This could prove to be a problem throughout the future as it could potentially cause the ability of languages to deteriorate.

Therefore, we can see that the younger generations, are extremely under the influence of social media in concern with their grammar and punctuation. However, we can also see that there could be two arguments for this as social media could provide benefits for grammar.

Type again soon, Anna

Threats and Pressures; of Social Media

Continuing my theme of the changes in interaction caused by social media and online applications, I will be discussing the threats and pressures which are found to be caused, by online medias.

Social media can be found to be the route cause for many of the younger generations pressures in life. This is due to the new endless opportunities to contact someone, and new ways to create further contact with classmates, beyond a classroom. Therefore, bullies now have countless opportunities to attack their fellow class mates with cruel messages. However, it can also be argued that these new social media opportunities of interaction benefit us, by allowing people to have an ease of communication, and create stronger bonds with people than what would exist without further communication.

Social media can be cruel when used for the wrong purposes. This is due to children, and even adults, using social media to send nasty messages, and also publicly post embarrassing images or horrible comments about individuals. These posts may sometimes be unintentional to hurt someone, or could be direct abuse to bully someone. Social media applications are available to us 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Therefore, they how the power to consistently attack someone, compared to school bullying many years ago which may have only existed in playgrounds, allowing people to escape bullying when they go home. Therefore, it perhaps could be considered that social media may require stricter age restrictions, or have more people looking over social media, watching what people are posting and having more boundaries.

However, it could also be seen that social media is an extremely useful, and now essential to stay connected with people. It is now possible to send instant messages and video chat with people, all over the world. This benefits us as it allows us to communicate with friends, family, colleagues, and meet new people. This makes communication much easier, as we now do not have to send a letter and wait days/ weeks for a reply, or have to spend long journeys travelling to meet up with people. Therefore, it can be seen that although social media can cause disruption such as bullying in peoples lives, it can also provide great benefits for us.

Therefore, it is clear to see that social media provides many advantages, as well as disadvantages for us, in concern with communication.

Type again soon, Anna

Lack of Face-to-Face Communication

Continuing from my last blog, "Stanger Danger", I am now moving onto the issue of lack of  face-to-face communication between individuals.

Social media is a massive influence in relation to impacting the way which people interact. This can be seen to reduce the amount of face-to-face communication which people have.

One of the reasons which I feel a lack of physical interaction occurs, is due to the ease of speaking to friends from the comfort of our own homes, via social media. I feel that people have been gradually slipping into a social media coma which they can sit, aimlessly on their phone for hours on end, without even noticing the time go by. This time on our phones is often spent without direction or real interest, it is just something which we humans have developed out of bad habit. To sit and refresh apps on our phones.

This time on our phones is spent talking with friends and generally updating our application profiles, to make ourselves and our lives appear to be more appealing than what they are. Therefore, people are finding this a much easier and simple way to live, by staying inside, on their own, not having to get ready and leave the house and make an effort with someone. So much time is dedicated towards this, whereas it could be spent much better off with quality, face-to-face, communication with people we actually care about. This time would also most likely bring much more enjoyment to us, and avoid these social media comas which many people find themselves slipping into every day. Therefore, social media is influencing us by consuming large portions of our time, and by drawing us away from other people, due to its ease of time consumption.

Another reason which social media affects the amount of face-to-face communication which people have, is that it reduces the requirement for people to have to see each other. Many people do not bother with making plans with their friends, as they do not have to. People nowadays feel that there is no point in going out to the park, to get a real social life, as they can simply instantly message their friends from the comfort of their own home, via sites such as twitter and Facebook. Perhaps logging online to chat rooms, twitter, and Facebook, is like a new form of playground for us? Is this really a suitable way for us to socialise with one another?

We must also consider how this lack of physical communication can affect our confidence in meeting new people and making friends. Many people now lack the understanding, and find it inappropriate to walk up to someone and start a conversation or even ask for help with directions, and resort to relying on technology for assistance instead.

Therefore, as we can see, social media is altering the way we interact with each other, by altering our desire to spend physical time with other people.

Type again soon, Anna

Social Media: Stranger Dangers

It can be seen that the further time goes on, the more technology is taking over our lives. Social media is a huge influence on our day to day lives, and can be identified to be impacting the way in which we interact with each other, more than just making communication instant.

The role of the internet initially was to increase the speed of tasks, such as researching, taking notes and communicating. However, it is now obvious, that people, especially the younger generation from ages 13-25 are now spending great lengths of time online. It can be seen that as much as 5 hours a day can be spent online per day by those within this age category.

Therefore, it can be seen that the take-over of this issue, has influenced us on a number and variety of factors within the majority of the populations lives. This new take-over has impacted aspects of our lives such as our safety. Nowadays people are “following” and talking to those online who we know nothing about. Therefore, by advertising our lives over social media applications, we may be putting ourselves in more danger than ever before. Within seconds of heard a person’s name, it is possible to go online and find out what they look like, their details, and who their friends are. Therefore, it can be seen that we should consider what information we are making available to others.

From young ages, we have always been told not to talk to people who we don't know, and have been enforced the "stranger danger" rule from adults. However, we can see now that this rule seems to be irrelevant behind the screens of a computer. Many people feel that when we are behind a keyboard, we are able to protect ourselves from the cruel realities of talking to people we don't know. However, it can be seen that the masks which our screens and keyboards produce, cant always keep us safe.

This is an important issue which I feel should be taken into more of a consideration due to the harms which we could potentially be getting ourselves into. By not respecting these harms, as much as we should. In order to ensure we protect ourselves and our friends, I feel that we should restrict ourselves from the information which we are submitting to the world.

I'll be continuing my thoughts on these issues next week, type soon, Anna