GordonGekko
Footballguy
Direct Headline: 7 Interesting Yet Negative Effects of Social Media Addiction on Children
by Alfred Amuno June 14, 2022
To understand the absurd effects of social media addiction in the 21st century.....Z children born in the 1990s through to the 2000s, and generation Alpha kids born in the 21st century, are cast in the middle of the sad mashup.... the number of internet users worldwide surpassed the 5 billion mark early in 2022. Remember that the global population is just shy of 8 billion.....Out of this figure, 4.6 billion users have installed one social media platform or another..... Facebook, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Instagram, Twitter... YouTube, DailyMotion, Vimeo, Facebook Video....found that overall screen use among teens and tweens increased by 17% from 2019 to 2021 — growing more rapidly than in the four years prior.....Daily screen use on average increased among tweens (ages 8 to 12) to five hours and 33 minutes .....and to eight hours and 39 minutes .... for teens (ages 13 to 18)... Extreme indulgence in technology devices is unhealthy and needs solutions to mitigate the impact they leave on children. But first, here are the ills associated with tech overuse....
1. The image disorder - Statistics show that users who post cute and sexy selfies on Instagram, Snapchat, or WhatsApp attract more shares and likes compared to those using ordinary images....Those who receive less feedback rate themselves negatively, and wrongly imagine they are inadequate. It gets worse when online bullies brand their images ugly....This is a precursor to low self-esteem and can trigger a series of negative social behavior....The victims will spice up things by applying excessive make-up and/or using image filtering tools to tweak their photos to create falsified facial and body appearance. Others charge up their profiles by supplanting images in cozy and foreign backgrounds to falsify their location....They use enhanced photographic impressions to appear exotic and rich, and for those blessed with dark skins, edit them to look lighter....
2. Social displacement – distorted communication....Our interaction with family, friends, and the ‘unknown’ on social media means we spend lots of online time liking, sharing, and chatting than we do, liking, sharing, and chatting in real life....Social displacement theory basically states that the more time you spend in the world of social media, the less time you’re likely to spend socializing with people in the real world.... This is a big blow to the critical social skills that are attainable through face-to-face interactions....
3. Exposure to adult content - Gone are the days when parents exercised control over what children watched on TV and sleazy Playboy magazines....The arrival of the internet and social media has ensured that explicit content is available for all to see. The internet is awash with free adult and other content, and social media is the platform through which they are shared....The youth feel comfortable weaving their way through this data alongside their peers. They are more than willing to walk the interesting, yet risky path than their cautious parents, resulting in a sense of digital and cultural disconnect between the older and younger generations....
4. Exposure to violent content - .... from violent media in movies, games, to live-streamed broadcasts....Children and teens who watch these become conflicted about what is right or wrong, and are tempted to embrace violence and inappropriate behavior, right up to adulthood....
5. Exposure to digital malpractices - .....children attending school in the 21st century have to contend with online bullying...Bullies choose to harass select victims via electronic messages, pictures, videos, audio, email, and posts.....The perpetrators usually send the offending media directly to the victim or via public platforms. The communication is intended to embarrass or even threaten the victims....Sexting is another common malpractice where offenders send sexually explicit images, audio-visual content, and texts to suspecting and unsuspecting victims.
6. Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) - ....is akin to digital peer pressure, where a user feels incomplete when offline and is driven by an impulsion to always stay online....it feels relevant to communicate with friends 24/7, just to be normal. This makes users share more content than is necessary. Uncontrolled posting of images and videos may lead to unwanted embarrassing exposure, especially when users accidentally share private content in the heat of the moment....
7. The effects of social media addiction on health - Excessive use of smartphones can lead to various health problems both directly and indirectly. For example, sitting becomes an issue if done for extended hours, in what is known as tech neck....The habit also interferes with other aspects of life such as eating. Users opt for quick fixes for food and become victims of obesity or other body malfunctions....Addicted users are also victims of sleepless nights which leaves them with sleep debt, and deprives them of sharpness at school, and at work....Other health complications: stress/depression...battered attention span....
.... A tween's underdeveloped frontal cortex can’t manage the distraction nor the temptations that come with social media use....The average teen spends nine hours a day connected to social media. Spending more non-tech time together can help slow down kids' social media usage.....Social media is an entertainment technology. It does not make your child....more prepared for real life.... nor is it necessary for healthy social development. It is pure entertainment attached to a marketing platform extracting bits and pieces of personal information and preferences from your child every time they use it, not to mention hours of their time and attention....Social media is an addictive form of screen entertainment. And, like video game addiction, early use can set up future addiction patterns and habits....Social media replaces learning the hard social "work" of dealing face-to-face with peers, a skill that they will need to practice to be successful in real life.....Social media can cause teens to lose connection with family and instead view “friends” as their foundation. Since the cognitive brain is still being formed, the need for your teen to be attached to your family is just as important now as when they were younger....
....Here are a few tips that work well for many parents....
Delay access. The longer parents delay access, the more time a child will have to mature so that he or she can use technology more wisely as a young adult. Delaying access also places a greater importance on developing personal authentic relationships first.
Follow their accounts. Social media privacy is a lie: Nothing is private in the digital world, and so it should not be private to parents. Make sure privacy settings are in place but know that those settings can give you a false sense of security. Encourage your teen to have private conversations in person or via a verbal phone call instead if they don’t want you to read it on social media.
Create family accounts. Create family accounts instead of individual teen accounts. This allows kids to keep up with friends in a safer social media environment.
Allow social media only on large screens. Allow your teens to only use their social media accounts on home computers or laptops in plain view, this way they will use it less. When it is used on a small private phone screen they can put in their pocket there are more potential problems with reckless use. The more secret the access, the more potential for bad choices.
Keep a sharp eye on the clock; they will not. Do you know how much time your child spends on social media a day? Be aware of this, and reduce the amount of time your child is on social media across all platforms. The average teen spends nine hours a day connected to social media. Instead, set one time each day for three days a week for your child to check their social media. Do they benefit from more time than that?
Plan face-to-face time with their friends. Remember that they don’t need 842 friends; four-to-six close friends are enough for healthy social development. Help them learn how to plan real, in-person, social get-togethers such as a leave-phones-at-the-door party, a home movie night, bowling, board games, cooking pizza, or hosting a bonfire. They crave these social gatherings so encourage them to invite friends over and help them (as needed) to organize the event.
Spend more real non-tech time together. Teens who are strongly attached to their parents and family show more overall happiness and success in life. They still need us now more than ever. It is easy to detach from them: Teens can be annoying! But attaching to family allows them to detach from the social media drama. Your child needs to feel like they can come home and leave the drama of their social world behind for a few hours. They want you to help them say no to social media and yes to more time with the family. They are craving those moments to disconnect, so make plans and encourage this at home.....
https://parentingalpha.com/7-interesting-yet-negative-effects-of-social-media-addiction-on-children/
www.psychologytoday.com
www.digitaltrends.com
by Alfred Amuno June 14, 2022
To understand the absurd effects of social media addiction in the 21st century.....Z children born in the 1990s through to the 2000s, and generation Alpha kids born in the 21st century, are cast in the middle of the sad mashup.... the number of internet users worldwide surpassed the 5 billion mark early in 2022. Remember that the global population is just shy of 8 billion.....Out of this figure, 4.6 billion users have installed one social media platform or another..... Facebook, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Instagram, Twitter... YouTube, DailyMotion, Vimeo, Facebook Video....found that overall screen use among teens and tweens increased by 17% from 2019 to 2021 — growing more rapidly than in the four years prior.....Daily screen use on average increased among tweens (ages 8 to 12) to five hours and 33 minutes .....and to eight hours and 39 minutes .... for teens (ages 13 to 18)... Extreme indulgence in technology devices is unhealthy and needs solutions to mitigate the impact they leave on children. But first, here are the ills associated with tech overuse....
1. The image disorder - Statistics show that users who post cute and sexy selfies on Instagram, Snapchat, or WhatsApp attract more shares and likes compared to those using ordinary images....Those who receive less feedback rate themselves negatively, and wrongly imagine they are inadequate. It gets worse when online bullies brand their images ugly....This is a precursor to low self-esteem and can trigger a series of negative social behavior....The victims will spice up things by applying excessive make-up and/or using image filtering tools to tweak their photos to create falsified facial and body appearance. Others charge up their profiles by supplanting images in cozy and foreign backgrounds to falsify their location....They use enhanced photographic impressions to appear exotic and rich, and for those blessed with dark skins, edit them to look lighter....
2. Social displacement – distorted communication....Our interaction with family, friends, and the ‘unknown’ on social media means we spend lots of online time liking, sharing, and chatting than we do, liking, sharing, and chatting in real life....Social displacement theory basically states that the more time you spend in the world of social media, the less time you’re likely to spend socializing with people in the real world.... This is a big blow to the critical social skills that are attainable through face-to-face interactions....
3. Exposure to adult content - Gone are the days when parents exercised control over what children watched on TV and sleazy Playboy magazines....The arrival of the internet and social media has ensured that explicit content is available for all to see. The internet is awash with free adult and other content, and social media is the platform through which they are shared....The youth feel comfortable weaving their way through this data alongside their peers. They are more than willing to walk the interesting, yet risky path than their cautious parents, resulting in a sense of digital and cultural disconnect between the older and younger generations....
4. Exposure to violent content - .... from violent media in movies, games, to live-streamed broadcasts....Children and teens who watch these become conflicted about what is right or wrong, and are tempted to embrace violence and inappropriate behavior, right up to adulthood....
5. Exposure to digital malpractices - .....children attending school in the 21st century have to contend with online bullying...Bullies choose to harass select victims via electronic messages, pictures, videos, audio, email, and posts.....The perpetrators usually send the offending media directly to the victim or via public platforms. The communication is intended to embarrass or even threaten the victims....Sexting is another common malpractice where offenders send sexually explicit images, audio-visual content, and texts to suspecting and unsuspecting victims.
6. Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) - ....is akin to digital peer pressure, where a user feels incomplete when offline and is driven by an impulsion to always stay online....it feels relevant to communicate with friends 24/7, just to be normal. This makes users share more content than is necessary. Uncontrolled posting of images and videos may lead to unwanted embarrassing exposure, especially when users accidentally share private content in the heat of the moment....
7. The effects of social media addiction on health - Excessive use of smartphones can lead to various health problems both directly and indirectly. For example, sitting becomes an issue if done for extended hours, in what is known as tech neck....The habit also interferes with other aspects of life such as eating. Users opt for quick fixes for food and become victims of obesity or other body malfunctions....Addicted users are also victims of sleepless nights which leaves them with sleep debt, and deprives them of sharpness at school, and at work....Other health complications: stress/depression...battered attention span....
.... A tween's underdeveloped frontal cortex can’t manage the distraction nor the temptations that come with social media use....The average teen spends nine hours a day connected to social media. Spending more non-tech time together can help slow down kids' social media usage.....Social media is an entertainment technology. It does not make your child....more prepared for real life.... nor is it necessary for healthy social development. It is pure entertainment attached to a marketing platform extracting bits and pieces of personal information and preferences from your child every time they use it, not to mention hours of their time and attention....Social media is an addictive form of screen entertainment. And, like video game addiction, early use can set up future addiction patterns and habits....Social media replaces learning the hard social "work" of dealing face-to-face with peers, a skill that they will need to practice to be successful in real life.....Social media can cause teens to lose connection with family and instead view “friends” as their foundation. Since the cognitive brain is still being formed, the need for your teen to be attached to your family is just as important now as when they were younger....
....Here are a few tips that work well for many parents....
Delay access. The longer parents delay access, the more time a child will have to mature so that he or she can use technology more wisely as a young adult. Delaying access also places a greater importance on developing personal authentic relationships first.
Follow their accounts. Social media privacy is a lie: Nothing is private in the digital world, and so it should not be private to parents. Make sure privacy settings are in place but know that those settings can give you a false sense of security. Encourage your teen to have private conversations in person or via a verbal phone call instead if they don’t want you to read it on social media.
Create family accounts. Create family accounts instead of individual teen accounts. This allows kids to keep up with friends in a safer social media environment.
Allow social media only on large screens. Allow your teens to only use their social media accounts on home computers or laptops in plain view, this way they will use it less. When it is used on a small private phone screen they can put in their pocket there are more potential problems with reckless use. The more secret the access, the more potential for bad choices.
Keep a sharp eye on the clock; they will not. Do you know how much time your child spends on social media a day? Be aware of this, and reduce the amount of time your child is on social media across all platforms. The average teen spends nine hours a day connected to social media. Instead, set one time each day for three days a week for your child to check their social media. Do they benefit from more time than that?
Plan face-to-face time with their friends. Remember that they don’t need 842 friends; four-to-six close friends are enough for healthy social development. Help them learn how to plan real, in-person, social get-togethers such as a leave-phones-at-the-door party, a home movie night, bowling, board games, cooking pizza, or hosting a bonfire. They crave these social gatherings so encourage them to invite friends over and help them (as needed) to organize the event.
Spend more real non-tech time together. Teens who are strongly attached to their parents and family show more overall happiness and success in life. They still need us now more than ever. It is easy to detach from them: Teens can be annoying! But attaching to family allows them to detach from the social media drama. Your child needs to feel like they can come home and leave the drama of their social world behind for a few hours. They want you to help them say no to social media and yes to more time with the family. They are craving those moments to disconnect, so make plans and encourage this at home.....
https://parentingalpha.com/7-interesting-yet-negative-effects-of-social-media-addiction-on-children/

Why Social Media Is Not Smart for Middle School Kids
Wondering why your middle schooler's social media use has ratcheted up your stress levels? Understanding the brain at this age can help you can take back control.

Why kids are getting addicted to digital media
A new study found that children’s media use has grown more in the last two years than in the four years prior.
