Why is Social Media Harmful For Kids?

 

            Background 

         Social media has blown up in the last decade and has impacted everybody in the world. No matter how old we were when it blew up, we were effected by it whether we started using it or was just a follower that never posted on any social media. As technology has grown, it has become easier to gain access to devices that are able to view social media. In this case, kids are introduced to social media at a young age and can be influenced by its presence. Before social media became a thing, memories of our childhood were kept in scrapbooks or physical picture copies that only few people could view, but not anymore. Now that social media exists, anybody can see what you used to be as a child if your parents post pictures or videos and there is no hiding from it. 

            Positives  

           Growing up with access to social media can sound scary to parents or adults because of the bad things that can be posted on it and kids have the chance to see it and ruin their innocence at young age, but it has some positives to it. One positive is that kids are allowed to express themselves and can become their own person at a quicker age because of the information that is out there. When gathering information from social media kids are allowed to process it and learn to have their own opinions at a young age. Another positive is they are allowed to talk to friends or other kids they know from school or close by without having to be with them. This helps them learn how to interact with people and make friends compared to only being able to see them when the parents let them see each other and have little social interaction with others. With positives there are always negatives and can out way the positives. 

            Negatives 

          Everybody has embarrassing moments growing and have gotten lucky with being able to get away from them with little consequences because they can only be seen with hard copies and stories that are told of those moments. Not anymore, kids now have to live with the consequences of these embarrassing because of social media and the ability to look back at the memories that anyone can look at once it is posted. This holds a strong grudge over kids posting on social media because of the consequence they will have to live with later on in life. Once something is posted it can be deleted but never truly away from everybody on the internet. With this kids growing up have to live with these memoires hanging over their head and cannot grow up and get away from these haunting memories that they do not want to be seen. This makes it hard to edit their own childhood and make it hard to have good memories of a happy childhood. With the ability to see the embarrassing childhood memories it is hard to see through that and view the happy moments kids had growing up when they are older because all they can see are the weird pictures they wish were not on their social media. Childhood should be a good memory and can reminisce on the happy moments growing up. Adults have grown up and have learned to forget the moments they did not enjoy growing up but can be a difficult task with the invention of social media when they were younger. Before social media people were able to start new and change identities and can embrace their new selves without worrying about who they were before but now with social media people can always tie you to the person you were before which can be a struggle and frustrating. With this being said it restricts kids growing up to little lifestyles and cannot change to someone new with people connecting to who they used to be to who they are trying to be now. I know I have changed drastically since I was younger and only very little people know who i was before and glad they do not know who I was before because honestly they would probably not want to talk to me. With this fresh start I am able to open myself to new opportunities because social media was not as big when I was a kid and people can not see who I used to be. The point of growing up is being able to change who you want to be and not who you used to be. 

            So What? 

           I did not write the pros and cons of social media at a young age just to write it, I want to show that posting pictures of embarrassing moments of kids can be harmful in the future because of the trouble to get away from those moments. Restricting kids from social media is almost impossible with technology now but can prevent them from posting something they will find to be harmful to their personality further on down the road. People need to pay closer attention to what they are posting before they click the button that allows anybody in the world can see. Parents can restrict the ability to allow their kids to post on social media and monitor to what they are watching on social media platforms and as technology grows there are more kid friendly apps that allow the same positives with very little negatives as normal social media posts.