Impact of social media on young generation

Social media is an online service, platform or website, which is a network of people-to-people social relationships; where they reflect their interests and actions.

Through social media, the user is presented with his/-her personal information and other necessary content. Online community services (online bulletin board systems, chat rooms, forums, web-logs, etc.) are also sometimes considered social media.

But in the larger sense, social media is a personal service. On the other hand, online services are group-centric. Generally, social media is a type of specialized website based on social relationships; where a person is bound to socialize by presenting his/her thoughts, emotions and human affairs in his /her own network.

The emergence of these social media platforms is not too long ago. The emergence of this medium came at the end of the last century, at a turning point in Internet technology. Although e-mail or other technological processes began to be exchanged in the 70's, this is the first time when social networking started via the web site named Geocities in 1994.

The following year, more two similar sites were established: theglobe.com and tripod.com. After that, there are successive sites like MySpace, Orkut, and Bebo. Needless to say, from this point onwards, Internet users have become increasingly attracted to the virtual world.

Social Media or network is now an inevitable part of everyone's life. Even the famous celebrities and large businesses have jumped into the social media craze. Large numbers of individuals wake up every morning and check the social media account instead of reading newspaper.

A research has made it clear that a large number of the Internet users in America spend about 22% of their time online by wandering around social media site.

Though this ratio is less in Bangladesh compared with America because of social system, lower availability of Internet, working system etc., the number of users and using time is not less in the context of Bangladesh. Since nowadays technology has come up with newer and highly developed smart phones, Internet has become more available to people.

The use of social media is no more confined in offices or home or at some comfortable places, rather people are using it outside of home, in classrooms, restaurants, even in the bus and while walking.

From the scenario of the involvement of people in social media sites, their effects on society can be imagined easily. As the social media have taken the Internet world by storm, the impact of social media and networking on society is enormous.

Involving in social media has become a craze to the young generation of Bangladesh like those of other countries. Though people of all ages are using this, social media are more popular among the young generation.

So, the impact is also high on the youths, they make new friends, communicate with their friends, share photos, videos, all their feelings, thoughts, opinions about personal life, social life and state, politics, governments, international politics and all other events.

They are expressing their likes and dislikes. Sometimes, they are creating mass opinion on certain issues by sharing and giving comments. So, social media have created a broader field for the youth to be known with the ongoing world. Social Media are even changing the youth's choice and lifestyle.

The Bangladeshi youths are using dresses like the other youths of the world; their food habit and fashion have also been changed by the impact of social media. They come to know about the culture of different regions of Bangladesh and other countries of the world. They are becoming influenced by many cultures through social media. But it is not an unmixed blessing. It too has both positive as well as negative impact on young generation simultaneously.

The positive impacts of social media on young generation today include making them updated on the events happening around the glove and also enabling them to be connected with their fellow youths and friends without physical meetings.

It bridges the gap between friends since a person living in a Africa can network and interact with his or her friend in the United States. This in turn helps strengthening relationships amongst classmates in high school or college, who after finishing school, moved to different locations around the world.

Additionally, youths can create pages and groups in the social media platforms based on their professions, faiths and other dimensions of their lives and this leads to more connections being built and more opportunities being opened for their respective disciplines. This can even lead to more employment opportunities being created for the unemployed youths. From the many interviews carried daily, youths say that social media platforms make their lives enjoyable.

Though social media seem to connect more people and make them stay updated, it leads to isolation socially according to a BBC news report. It reduces the number of face-to-face interaction amongst the youths because they normally spend most of their time on these online social platforms.

An evaluation from a number of studies done by many scientists shows that social isolation can cause a number of effects such as physical, emotional, mental and psychological issues in these youths. This can in turn lead to depression, anxiety and many other problems. It also leads to misspelling of words and misuse of words and tenses using short forms and abbreviations.

This has high negative impact more so on students because it affect their language capabilities directly and this lead to poor grades in languages. Also, it exposes the youths below eighteen years to online predators who get to woo them into sexual acts such as lesbianism and other general sexual misconduct. It also exposes these youths to pornographic content being spread in some of the social media online.

This in turn leads to early pregnancies amongst young girls causing them to be dropped out from school. It also can lead to contraction of sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV and this can lead to early deaths of your young generation. The moral of these youths is also decayed as they now get access to immoral literature and videos.

Spending long hours chatting on social media also decreases productivity amongst the youths. This in turn causes the youths not to be self-dependent and instead depend on their parents and families for up keeping.

Social media also provides a good platform where cyber theft and bullying is done and this increases the chances and incidences of identity theft. This has a number of risks to youths as their personal information can be stolen since it is stored in some locations they do not know about or whose security is not known or is questionable.

Social media also encourage the spread of wrong information and news majority aimed at tainting other people's names or other groups of interest such as political or religious groups. This in turn leads to fight and enmity between the concerned parties where the youths may get involved and become the victims of killing and injuries.

Addiction to social media may also cause serious physical disorder and discomfort to the youths such as: Dry eyes or strained vision, carpal Tunnel Syndrome, sudden weight gain or weight loss, back aches and neck aches; severe headaches etc., sleep disturbances and disorders. It is interesting to note that technology market of China is worldwide. But they do not use face book like us.

To sum up, social media have been proved to have both positive and negative impacts on our young generation. It can help raise their voices against the hypocrisy and tyranny of the authority and the government.

At the same time, it can tell upon their future throwing them into the ocean of so-called modern and glamorous lifestyle that attracts and allures them to be none but a flamboyant playboy. So, the youths should make and effective decision whether to go on using the social media or stop or even be moderate on their usage.

Parents should guide and advise their younger ones on current matters like the usage of social media and warn them of its negative impacts when misused or overused. The education curriculum also should be revised so that it can include social media studies in its disciplines to alert students that they need to be careful in their social media usage.


The writer is a columnist
and researcher