BAD EFFECTS OF SOCIAL NETWORKING ON KIDS

BAD EFFECTS OF SOCIAL NETWORKING ON KIDS

The one common bad effect of social media is addiction - the constant checking of Facebook, Twitter, or other social media updates. When technology abusers check their device very often it triggers the addiction-oriented parts of their brains. For kids and teens, this addiction could disrupt other worthwhile activities like concentrating in schoolwork, reading or engaging in sports.

Baroness Susan Greenfield , a top neuroscientist of the Oxford University warns about the lifelong effects of too much social networking:

•  Facebook and other networking sites “are infantilizing the brain into the state of small children who are attracted by buzzing noises and bright lights, who have a short attention span and live for the moment”.   There is hardly any concentration skills required in participating in these social networking sites, and these train the brain to have poor attention span.
•  Kids are detracted from learning to communicate in the real world.  There are reports from teachers that social networking is affecting kids’ comprehension levels. Also, if kids communicate primarily through the screen they do not learn the subtleties of real life communication - such as body language, tone of voice, and subconsciously sensing the molecules that other people release.
• Social networking sites make kids more self-centered.  Since Facebook  and other sites give kids their own page which is about them, it leads some vulnerable kids to think that everything revolves around them, a precursor for emotional problems in their later life.  This might also result in inability to empathize.  
• These sites make kids prone to sensationalism.

• Pedriatricians observe that some teens suffer from "Facebook depression". After spending a lot of time on Facebook and other popular social networking sites, some teens become anxious and moody. Also, a vulnerable teen may suffer from depression when he reads great things happening to his friends, and his life is not so great in comparison. Teens who experience "Facebook depression" usually have trouble with social interactions in general, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).

Other bad effects of social networking according to psychologists or suggested by scientific studies are as follows:

• Educators also note that for kids and teens in social networks, there are no spelling and grammar rules.  In fact it is cool to misspell and not make sense.  Less sophisticated children will find it hard to differentiate between social networking communication and real world communication.  In fact many teachers are complaining that social networking communication with misspellings and lack of grammar are seeping through student’s school writings.
• Screen relationships detract from spending time in real life relationships.
• Social networks are fertile grounds for bad influencers and anonymous venoms and hunting grounds for deviants and other predators.
• For kids who crave attention, Facebook and other social network becomes a venue for them to act out. These kids may make inappropriate statements, pictures and videos that could ultimately harm them. Also, posts and materials that are published online tend to be permanent and may haunt them in the future.
• A study by Larry Rosen, a professor of psychology at California State University concludes that extended use of social networks like Facebook can result in a decrease in empathy among teens, and thus an increase in narcissism.
• Young people who have a history of harming themselves or attempting suicide might be particularly vulnerable to negative messages posted online, new research shows. The new review, published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE, found that kids and young adults who have thoughts of self-harm or suicide actually spend more time on the Internet and are more often victims of cyberbullying than their peers who do not have such thoughts.
• Selfies, which became popular with the rise of camera phones, can trigger mental health conditions when a person becomes obsessed with looks. The Mirror, for example, recently featured a selfie addict who tried to kill himself when he couldn’t take a perfect photo. According to Pamela Rutledge in Psychology Today, “Preoccupation with selfies can be a visible indicator of a young person with a lack of confidence or sense of self that might make him or her a victim of other problems as well. Excessive and increasingly provocative selfie-ing is a form of 'acting out,' a common behavioral pattern to get attention."
• A University of Michigan study seem to indicate that in young adults, Facebook use leads to decline in subjective well-being. The more young adults use Facebook, the worse they feel moment-to-moment and the less they feel satisfied with their lives overall.
• DoSometing.org, “one of the largest organizations for young people and social change”,lists several bad effects of social media, which includes sleep disorder, depression, addiction, 24/7 stress, isolation, insecurity, and fear of missing out (FOMO).