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