Effects Of Social Media On Our Generation

1224 Words3 Pages

How do social media (and the internet) affect the development of people of our generation? Social media and the internet has become apart of the culture of this generation. Many people turn to social media for various reasons such as news, networking, games, and other time wasting activities. Social media and the internet has affected the development of people of our generation by contributing to less social interactions, strengthening communication skills, and online harassment. Social media has caused our generation to have a lot less social interactions. Instead of meeting someone and talking with them face to face social media has made it easier to communicate with someone from behind a further distance, behind a screen. Angela Fowler stated, …show more content…

Penelope Trunk said, “the type of writing that students do--via IM, Twitter, Facebook, and so forth-- is actually great for building communication skills” (Trunk 2). The reason behind communication skills being built through social media is our generation is practicing with our reading, and writing constantly while on social media. “The fact that students today almost always write for an audience gives them a different sense of what constitutes good writing” (Thompson 2). Our generation has a diverse audience of people that “likes” what we post, making it tempting to come up with a status or post that is well written and appeals to the audience. No matter if it’s an debate, opinion, or planning something with a friend, social media has made us adapt to writing for an audience of different people that we want to impress. It has also helped the generation with code switching, because based on the intended audience we have adapted to making changes in the way we communicate to appeal to a person or group of people. Verbally, our generation takes the skills learned from social media and speak the way they type on social media, appealing to whoever is listening to …show more content…

In our generation “cyberbullying is quite common, can occur to any young person online, and can cause profound psychosocial outcomes including depression, anxiety, severe isolation, and, tragically, suicide” (O 'Keeffe 1). Cyberbully has become apart of our generation due to the internet and social media. The outcome of cyberbullying can range from developed health problems to death. The development of cyberbullying in our generation comes from ads all around social media, “Many social media sites display multiple advertisements such as banner ads, behavior ads that influence not only the buying tendencies of preadolescents and adolescents but also their views of what is normal” (O 'Keeffe 1). As children we are easily influenced by what we see and what is accepted, since social media and the internet have become so popular children start to use it at an early age. If an advertisement is showing that someone isn’t normal for whatever reason then it influences the child or group of children to make fun of other children on the internet or in person with whatever the “abnormal” characteristic is. The belief that that person or group of people aren’t normal then spreads to other children, overall developing a generation of people cyberbullying without even knowing what they are doing. Sexting is a part of the harassment caused by social media and the

Open Document