The Effects Of Social Media Addiction On Teenagers

Research Problem

The evolution of technology and the presence of several social networks has become a prominent part of a lot of young people. However, the more people turn to the social networks as their only means of networking, then the more the people are likely to get hooked. It is important to identify whether people make use of the social networks because they are lonely or people become isolated in the course of using the social networks (Frey et al. 2007). After identifying the impact of the internet, the paper will come up with recommendations of what people should do to help them cope.

The paper will concentrate the downside of the social networks and a positive impact to the users. For instance, people have met online, got into a relationship and finally ended up in marriage. Secondly, the internet has been used to frontier online campaigns that have made the voice of people be heard and finally, the internet is currently the most effective channel of communication. Therefore, the paper will not be showing that the internet is solely bad, but it will only show one of the negative impacts that could result from the use of the web.

Research problem

Several people are currently spending most of their time on the internet.  As a result, therefore, physical interactions have been minimized whereby people prefer to exchange their ideas on the social platforms. Further even today, people are getting into relationships that end up in marriages after they met online.  If people spend most of their time on social platforms, then it is important to identify whether this can lead to loneliness.

The research will be conducted in a community where the participants both males and females from early teenagers to late adolescents. This is particularly important because it will help in identifying which group in the community is on the internet in social media.

The objective of this research is to address the implication of social media to teenagers in Africa on the way they are using this medium and the impacts to their behavior and lives.

Specific Objective:

• To determine how the teens use social media in their lives daily
• Impacts of social media on Social media to behavior
• Determine risks that comes with social media on the teens.

Research questions

• Do people use the social networks because they are lonely?
• What is the most preferred mode of communication: face-to-face or virtual communication?
• What is the level of satisfaction when people use the social networks for interactions?
• Do people feel lonely even after spending time on social networks?

It’s expected that this research will assist with sufficient knowledge on effects of social media on teens. The findings in this paper will also help policy makers in different sectors of the government. An example is in the educational sector where curriculum developers will be well informed when developing curriculum, further, it will help the doctors when doing counseling with teens especially to know which tool they can use to get to the teens effectively. The research can further assist other scholars interested in this field.

Social networks have made a positive impact on the society and people can learn what is happening around the world quickly. Additionally, the presence of the internet has made it possible for human beings to maintain relationships formed after nature separates them and they live in different parts of the world. The quality of life is seemingly good because people can share pictures and their life highlights even though they are not living together. However, the internet, on the other hand, can facilitate loneliness because people are restricted to only share the positive and happy moments of their lives. The cycle has however been built by the people because they only post the bright highlights and as a result, everyone else is restricted to posting the positive aspects of life to fit in (Marche 2012). As a result, the social network platforms kill the genuineness that existed between friends and family members when they would share even the challenging aspects of their life.

Unit of Investigation

Furthermore, people have gone for an extra mile whereby they have created a false impression to the world in an attempt to fit in. As a result, people currently do not have a chance whereby they create bonds such that they can easily share their frustrations in life . Besides, trying hard to keep the false impression is also likely to be a life stressor and hence make the affected person suffer loneliness. Additionally, even today when people are gathered together, they concentrate more on their screens rather than the individuals in the surrounding (Rasanen 2007). This happens even at home, and so the parents lack time to listen to what problems their children would have and vice versa. As a result, the social media has made it tough for people to communicate their problems with other people.

Communication is an important aspect of every individual in the society and people are supposed to embrace effective communication amongst themselves. In the absence of communication, various conditions are likely to reveal themselves, and that differ in severity. Communication has different roles to people, which include maintenance of the personal relationships that people have amongst themselves, earning an income, leisure activities, social activities, and community development. Hence, it is important to ensure that effective communication has been maintained among all stages of the society (Shen & Khalifa, 2010).

It, therefore, becomes necessary to evaluate whether the internet is a channel that will enhance effective communication.  As seen earlier, the social network platform does not allow people to express what their real life is like and instead, people only have a chance to show their happy moments (Liu and Larose 2008). As a result, therefore, the social network platforms deny people to exercise all the roles of communication such as the discussion of the personal life because people cannot discuss the problems that they have encountered. When people share such moments, then it becomes easy for them to move on with life with easy burdened because a solution to the problem is likely to be found once people have shared with others. Additionally, a person could be on the online platform, and yet the person would fail to engage in any social activity (Amedie, 2015 ). The social networks do not necessarily involve sharing of ideas, but a person would just be present to share what problems they are undergoing. Based on the two shortcomings that have been outlined about the social networks as a medium of communication, then the internet is not an effective channel of communication, and people can get lonely while still using it (Guillen and Suarez 2010).

The first question tried to identify the gender of the participants. The results given were as shown in Table 1.

Gender	Frequency
Female	12
Male	8

Therefore, according to the results in the table, the number of females that participated in the research were more than males. Therefore, an assumption can be made that more females spend their time online than males does.

In the second question, the researcher was interested in identifying the age of the participants. The table below shows the results obtained;

Objectives / Research Questions

Table 2

Age group	Frequency
13-14	8
15-16	6
17-18	3

According to the table above, the youthful people had the highest number that engaged in social network interactions with the elderly recording the lowest number of people that were involved in online interactions.

In the third question, the researcher was interested in identifying whether all the participants were involved in social networks.

	Frequency
Yes	16
No	4

The table shows that majority of the participants were signed in to one or more social network platforms. This is the reflection of the entire society and therefore majority of the people are signed in to different social network platforms.

In the fourth question, the researcher was interested in finding out how many hours each of the participants spent online.

Name	Frequency
Lucy	18
David	14
Bright	16
Tess	15
Evie	14
Ishmael	12
Nancy	14
James	20
Alehandro	17
Danso	14
Dushton	15
Brandon	14
Evanes	13
Milkah	12
Nancy	11
Roselyn	17
Joyce	16
Judy	15
Jacinta	18

From the table above, it is clear that people spent most of their time on social network platforms. The range of the hours spent online range between 12 and 20 hours. This is an indication that people accessed the internet while at work and while at home and a few ended up spending their sleep time while still on online platforms.

In the fifth question, the researcher was interested in to know whether the participants logged in to social network while they were happy, lonely, or at anytime. The table below shows the results.

	Frequency
Happy	3
Lonely	4
Anytime	13

According to the information gathered, the participants took part in the social platforms whether they were happy or lonely and this shows that the emotions of the participant were not a contributing factor to whether the person should log online. Secondly, there are a few of the participants who felt that they should join the social platforms either when they are happy or when they are unhappy. Third, a few people are engage in online social networks because they are happy.

In the sixth question, the researcher wanted to identify how often people meet with their friends and relatives for face-to-face discussions. The results of this question are outlined below.

	Frequency
One a month	11
Twice a month	7
Every weekend	2

The table indicates that people have lost their personal contact with their friends and relatives. For instance, the people who went to visit their friends and relatives compromised of the old and these are the people that did not use the social network platforms (Ahn, 2011). The majority of the people are those that did not frequently visit their parents and hence they had lost the contact with their friends and relatives.

The seventh question was aimed at identifying which mode of communication that people preferred the most. This is between virtual communication and face-to-face communications and the results are outlined in the table below.

	Frequency
Virtual communications	12
Face-to-face	8

The results of the table show that several people are more conversant with the virtual communication rather than the face-to-face communication. As a result, therefore, more people are using the online platforms to enhance their communication.

The eighth question aimed at identifying whether the people were satisfied after using the online communication. The question would tell whether they were satisfied with the kind of bonds that they had established amongst themselves. The results were indicated in the table below.

	Frequency
Satisfied	9
Not satisfied	11

Justification

The results show that the number of individuals who were not satisfied with the results was slightly higher than the number of people who were satisfied. This shows that social network platform was not an effective mode of communication.

Concept

Social media is some websites that make it easy for people to access information about people or places. Social media creates an instant interaction with the world with just a button on your phone or computer. It can be beneficial if used appropriately and monitored but is it be detrimental to someone’s life.

Dimensions

Social media is huge and still growing with so many Apps being created every single day and in every aspects of our lives whether entertainment or work related.

With this in mind the teenagers would definitely enjoy social media sole purpose would be entertainment. These would include Facebook, twitter, instagram, snap chat, and online games.

Causes

• Mood and feeling

Most teens get on social media because they feel like doing it and these could include reasons such as getting in touch with friend, staying up to date with current news and  to share opinions

• Stress and escapism

Stress is generally a thing with teenagers and with social media everywhere they use this as an escape goat. Teenagers can use social media to play competitive games to forget whatever could be stressing them or even watch funny videos and engage with fellow teenagers (Shen & Khalifa, 2010) .

This could be a very efficient and effective way to calm down and later on deal with whatever could be challenging them

• Boredom

After school or even doing house chores, anyone can get bored this is a very bid trigger to join social media whether Facebook, twitter, instgram, snap chat or even you tube. All these will keep a teenager occupied.

Consequences

• Physical and mental health outcomes

Involves Cyber bullying hence health issues such as stress, depression and even death.

• Psychosocial functioning

This are factors that would affect the teenagers behavior with others, as mentioned above social media makes someone lonely and causes depression as well.

• Work / School productivity

Multitasking is recommended everywhere but unfortunately it is very hard to find someone working productively and at the same time on social media. According to research productivity whether at school or work  is affected negatively by teens who go online while at work or school. 

Reference list

Ahn, J. (2011). The effect of social network sites on adolescents’ social and academicdevelopment: Current theories and controversies. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 62(8), 1435-1445.

Amedie, Jacob, “The Impact of Social Media on Society” (2015).Advanced Writing : Pop Culture Intersections. 2.https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/engl_176/2

Davis K. J Adolescences; experiences of  belonging and self-closure. 2012 Dec; 35(6):1527-36. Epub 2012 Apr 2. 

Shen K.N., Khalifa M. (2010) A Research Framework on Social Networking Sites Usage:   Critical Review and Theoretical Extension. In: Cellary W., Estevez E. (eds) Software

Services for e-World. I3E 2010. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, vol 341. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

Fisher, D.R. and Boekkooi, M., 2010. Mobilizing Friends and Strangers: Understanding the role of the Internet in the Step It Up day of action. Information, Communication & Society, 13(2), pp.193-208.

Frey, B.S., Benesch, C. and Stutzer, A., 2007. Does watching TV make us happy?. Journal of   Economic psychology, 28(3), pp.283-313.

Courtois C, All A, Vanwynsberghe H. Cyberpsychol Behav Soc Netw. 2012 Jun; 15(6):290-5.

Guillén, M.F. and Suárez, S.L.,2010. Explaining the global digital divide: Economic, political and sociological drivers of cross-national Internet use. Social Forces, 84(2), pp.681-708.

How does social media affect teens?. (2017). . Retrieved June 2, 2017, fromhttps://www.dove.com/uk/dove-self-esteem-project/help-for-parents/talking-about-appearance/how-does-social-media-affect-teens.html

Ramasubbu, S. (2015). Influence of social media on teenagers. Huffpost. Retrieved June 2, 2017, from https://www.huffingtonpost.com/suren-ramasubbu/influence-of-social-media-on-teenagers_b_7427740.html

Liu, X. and LaRose, R., 2008. Does using the Internet make people more satisfied with their lives? The effects of the Internet on college students’ school life satisfaction. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 11(3), pp.310-320.

Marche, S., 2012. Is Facebook making us lonely. The Atlantic, 2. Media inflience on teenagers. (2017). Raising Children Network. Retrieved June 2, 2017, from https://raisingchildren.net.au/articles/media_influences_teenagers.html

Udorie, J. (2017). Social media is harming the mantal health of teenagers.The state has to act. The guardian.

Räsänen, P. and Kouvo, A., 2007. Linked or divided by the web?: Internet use and sociability in four European countries. Information, Community and Society, 10(2), pp.219-241.

Reich SM, Subrahmanyam K, Espinoza G. Friending, IMing, and hanging out face-to-face: Overlap inadolescents’ online and offline social networks. Developmental Psychology. 2012;48(2):356–368.

Stepanikova, I., Nie, N.H. and He, X., 2010. Time on the Internet at home, loneliness, and life satisfaction: Evidence from panel time-diary data. Computers in Human Behavior, 26(3),pp.329-338.

Szwedo DE, Mikami AY, Allen JP. Social networking site use predicts changes in young adults’ psychological adjustment. Journal of Research on Adolescence. 2012;22(3):453–466.Song, H., Zmyslinski-Seelig, A., Kim, J., Drent, A., Victor, A., Omori, K. and Allen, M., 2014. Does Facebook make you lonely?: A meta analysis. Computers in Human Behavior, 36, pp.446-452.

Vergeer, M. and Pelzer, B., 2009. Consequences of media and Internet use for offline and onlinenetwork capital and well?being. A causal model approach. Journal of Computer? Mediated Communication, 15(1), pp.189-210.