CI 3342 Blog Post #1
Upon researching the Common Sense Media and the Pew Research Center reveals the relationship of teens between their social media and social life. One thing that didn’t surprise me is that 95% of teens have mobile devices. I remember when I was a teenager almost everyone including me already have their own phone. I remember getting my first phone at the age of 14 because everyone else was getting one and my girlfriend got one, so I wanted one to get one so I can stay connected with them outside of school especially with my girlfriend. I remember my parents were concerned with me having a phone because of the negative effects that the media has displayed about social media and they were worried that I could be if I own one. I ended up convicting them and I got the Motorola Droid as my first phone.
I know one thing that I did took me by surprise is according to Common Sense Media about 13% of teens said that had been cyberbullied before with more than one in 10 saying it was serious. This surprised because how low this number is. I figured it was at least 25% to 30% people experience cyberbullied because of how common I heard people experiencing it. Since I started on social media, I was aware of the issue of cyberbullying existing and luckily I was able to avoid being targeted online, however some of my friends weren’t as lucky as they got hacked and the hacker will post things that isn’t true about them. I remember one of my friends being hacked by someone and they messaged another friend and he quickly knew that this wasn’t our friend and instead it was a hacker so he messaged the rest of us to expose this person and we did it until he log out of our friend account. We were able to stop him from doing any harm to our friend account.
Another negative thing about social media is that 3 in 4 teens reported seeing racist, homophobic, and sexist content at least somewhat often. This is something that I see quite often online and it is a shame that it happens often. However I would say that this likely occurs online simply because the digital presence allows them to hide from the public and express anything that they want because no one knows who they are. This is an issue because having the ability not to use your real life photos or name gives them an advantage to feel like they have all the power and believe that there is nothing anyone could do about it. I can guarantee that if this was face-to-face that majority of people would not say anything that is racist, homophobic, or sexist because they don’t have the power or the ability to hide.
To end this blog on a good note, I will look at the positives on social media and teens. In Common Sense Media, many teenagers have talked about how social media allows them to feel connected to their friends and not become alone. They felt that social media have improved their communication skills and made them felt better mentally. Social media have become important now than ever because of the pandemic as it is our best option to reach out to our friends while maintain social distance. Hopefully there will be a way to reduce the amount of negatives social media have as it has a lot of potential for the greater good.