Zander Roseborough Ms. Lehmann English 2-1B 7 February 2020 Social Media Impact on Teens 11 teens die every day from texting and driving ("Texting and Driving Crashes Facts and Statistics”)! Social media can have severe consequences, especially for teens. Teens should be responsible users of social media because social media impacts teens’ well-being, social connectedness, and academic achievements. In examining social media’s impact on well-being, it is clear the connection is complex. How we use social media impacts our well-being. Social media has both good and bad impacts on teens’ emotional health. There are a range of challenges teens face in life, and social media allows them to seek out help they might not get otherwise. James et al write, “The ability to communicateanonymously can mitigate barriers, such as shame, that interfere with support-seeking offline”(72). It helps teens get help they need even though they are too scared to ask for help. Having considered the positive impact of social media, users must also be aware of the negative. Social media has been blamed for many negative impacts on people’s lives. James et al explain, “Several investigations document correlations between heavy media use and reduced well-being – related outcomes, such as diminished life satisfaction, internalizing negative experiences, and various dimensions of ill-being, such as depression, anxiety, attention problems, and stress” (72). When young adultsuse social media to compare themselves to others, negative outcomes will follow. When social media presents the good things in our lives as the only things, users can lose sight of the messiness of life, making them feel less satisfied with what they have. The impact that social media has on adolescents’ well-being depends upon how it is being used. Social media is making it hard for young adults to get more face to face conversations. “Teens preference for face to face communication with friends has declined substantially, and their perception of social media’s interference with personal interactions has increased” (K.Y. 18). Because teens only talk over the phone where they cannot be seen, social skills suffer. Young adults can have difficulties talking with people in person.Many teens are going away from face to face communication and going to social media. “Only 33 percent say their favorite way to communicate with friends is in person (dropping from 49 percent in 2012) and teens are more likely to say they are distracted by social media when they are with other people (54 percent, up from 44)” (K.Y. 18). This quote proves that teens are changing.It’s not entirely a bad thing; adolescentsaren't losing their communication skills entirely, but they are losing the ability to talk in person.Teens are talking mostly over the phone,and they need to talk in person because if they lost those skills, how would they know how to talk to an actual human in the real world?Kids need to get out of the house and hang out with their friends in person. Some argue that the dangers of social media have been overexaggerated. Despite the appeal of this argument, the negative effects of social media cannot be ignored entirely. Using social media too much has been connected to a lack of emotional and physical well-being as well as weaker social connectedness. Success in school has also been impacted by screen time. “Academic performance is directly related to sleep time and inversely related to overall sedentary SMU [screen media use] among the students who participated in this study” (Peiró-Velert et al 5). The study found that the more time students spent on their screens, the less time they had to sleep, which resulted in lower academic achievement.It’s obvious that social media’s impact is complicated, and people should be mindful of how they use it. By using social media responsibly, teens can minimize its impact on their health, connections with others, and success in school. Being aware of how they use social media can minimize its negative effects on teens.Teens like social media and have become distracted by it, so teens need to be more aware of how they are using it. The amount of time teens spend on social media has an indirect impact on their academic achievements. Social media’s impacts have gone so far as to take lives, making it crucial that teens learn to use it responsibly.
Work Cited Page James, Carrie, Katie Davis, Linda Charmaraman, Sara Konrath, Petr Slovak, Emily Weinstein, and Lana Yarosh. “Digital Life and Youth Well-being, Social Connectedness, Empathy, and Narcissism.” Pediatrics, vol. 140, no. S2, November 2017, pp. 71-75. Academic Search Premier, doi: 10.1542/peds.2016-1758F. 21 January 2020. Y, K. “Social Media and Teens.” School Library Journal. Vol. 64, No. 10, October 2018, pp. 1-3. Academic Search Premier. 21 January 2020. Peiró-Velert, Carmen, Alexandra Valencia-peris, Luis M. González, Xavier Garcia-Massó, Pilar Serra Añó, and José Devís-Devís. "Screen Media Usage, Sleep Time and Academic Performance in Adolescents: Clustering a Self- Organizing Maps Analysis.” Plos One, vol. 9, no. 6, June 2014, pp. 1-9. Academic Search Premier, doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0099478. Accessed10 February 2020. “Texting and Driving Crashes Facts and Statistics.”Teen Safe. 19 February 2019. Accessed 26 February 2020.
1. Explain the process you went through to write this paper. Please be specific.
I went through articles with my class, we took Cornell notes, and finally wrote the paper. 2. What qualifies this paper as an argumentative essay? What are the requirements for this genre and how did you meet them? You have a main points, you have examples, a rebuttal and then restate your main claim. 3. Explain one thing you learned about reading research or taking notes on research that you can apply to your next research paper. The Cornell notes helped I ton so I learned a lot from those and I plan on using that to help me in the future.