Impact of Social Networking on Adolescents

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Social networking considerably affects the lives of billions of people around the world, exhibiting its most significant consequences upon adolescents. It exists as a form of modern communication in which people converse through online chats, exchanging photographs, blogging, or updating one’s status. Social networking sites, also referred to as SNS, “are a form of social media in that they rely on digital technology to facilitate communication. These sites can further be explained as networked publics as they move the act of public socializing from face to face interaction to the online domain” (Parker and Boyd qtd. in Livsey 5). These sites frequently interchange with the term social media, which includes any form of mass communication via …show more content…

in Livsey 1). With their thoughts, common sense, and emotions still developing, adolescents become susceptible to both positive and negative influence, causing them to feel the most significant impact from the consumption of social media. This allows social media to greatly hinder young minds from proper development and diminishes people’s ability to verbally communicate face-to-face, preventing the construction of personal relationships. Social networking creates a feeling of community for teenagers as the term ‘“social networking” is [currently] used to describe the communities built via technologies” (Braun 71). However, few intentional relationships form as people do not connect with one another in a personal manner via online conversation. They rather observe what someone displays online for others to view, not necessarily one’s true self, but one’s best or most popular self. Online networking creates social and psychological issues within teenagers as they become unable to formulate proper relationships, gain a distorted self-image, and expose themselves to the dangers of the internet such as cyber

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