Table of Contents
The dynamics in technology has set a pace that creates a ripe ground for the social networking or social media to thrive at an accelerating speed. Information sharing, friendship maintenance, recognition or even employment discharge must not involve physical presence. The innovations and interventions in the social networking have enhanced the possibility of all these duties to continue online. Besides, there are several devices that have been availed to which the online operations are enhanced. The devices are mobile and portable equipment; they include tablets, iPad, and mobile phones. The culture that exists currently is oriented by technology hence the sites for social networking has become part of the youths’ lives. Some of the sites include Myspace, LinkedIn, YouTube, WhatsApp, Twitter, Viber, Hike, Messaging and Facebook among others. Of these, Facebook is engaging the highest number of youths. Despite the positive impacts that the online interactions generate among the youths, the negative impacts are more pronounced, and their extended effects remain identifiable on the character traits of this young generation, and therefore an upper hand needs to get in control. This study will involve arguments in support of or against this opinion from different views of various scholars.
Though there are many positive effects in comparison to the negative ones, the impacts of the few negative effects are huge. For instance, in the past centuries, respectable cultural beliefs about attire and simple way of life, could be preserved within the community for several consecutive generations. However, the social media has made the globe to be a small village in that, youths from one point can learn the secular way of life from crazy persons, at a different point who do it for ill motives. In the process, young females have progressively learned to dress crazily, and this has greatly contributed to sexual immorality globally. Secondly, the convenience associated with the online operations is detrimental to health. The life expectation is greatly reduced because of such extreme convenience. The use of the social media does not entail much of physical movement, eventually, the young generation has fallen a victim of chronic diseases caused by lack of exercise. This is different from the physical movement that people engaged in while going to work, to visit a friend or to attend to other issues done online today. The crime rate is also catching up with the pace of technology. Thieves do not need to physically break into a building; instead, they only hack into an online system and get hold of billions of dollars. The amount of money stolen online easily is quite challenging for the thieves to obtain the same via manual stealing. These are but few, however, managers of these social media have to consider innovations and inventions that automatically, put the users into self-control as it has failed voluntarily.
Sinha and his two colleagues highlight one main negative effect of the social media on the sprouting generation and its tributaries. According to these scholars, addiction is considered the outstanding effect. Ones the youth is hooked to this media; they get closed from the practical knowledge of daily life. They then get locked into vast uncontrolled information which ends up confusing. Eventually, the networking leads to unnecessary time consumption, exposure to online predators and decreased productivity. The article, suggests that the social media users have to deal with the challenges associated with their course, which looks promising for the future (Sinha et al. 489). Contrarily, Sinha has not considered the lack of self-control among these users. They have failed to deal with the challenges hence the pronounced a nuisance is evident.
Siddiqui and Singh are not left behind in this discussion. In their article, they have considered both the positive and negative impacts of social media on business, education, society and on youngsters. About the effects on the youngster, the scholars uphold the fact that the negative and the positive effects on the youths are equal. Some of the negative effects highlighted relate to time wastage due to addiction, information sharing leading to murder, kidnapping or robbery, sexual immorality and exposure to uncontrolled information. From the conclusion of this article, controlled use of the media has been advised since the addiction bit of it is the core cause of the negative effects (Siddiqui & Singh 75). These scholars raise the need of control as they have noted the huge negative impacts, though the users addressed to enhance the control are already handicapped in this. Therefore, the implementation of the suggestion may not be realistic.
Shabir and his colleagues conducted a case study in Bahawalpur city in general impact of social media on the youth. In their findings, they considered both the negative and the positive impacts in the political, social, academic and religious lives of the young generation. Demographically, they noted that young female is the highest users of the social media, in addition to the youths in higher levels of education. Some of the highlighted negative effects relate to the lack of concentration while in class among the students, without the teacher’s notice. This eventually leads to ‘half-baked’ professionals. Secondly, politically hate speeches are enhanced via these media which encourages passionate enmity among the concerned. Moral norms sneak out of most cultures due to the influence of the immoral way of life shared in the social media (Shabir et al. 149). In general, these scholars call for the highest level of self-control while in use of the social media, as they consider that benefits of the same ordeal are enormous and cannot lead to the conclusion that the media should be done away with. According to them, the technology is excellent, but the users are undisciplined. These arguments sound realistic, though loopholes are evident. Someone else has to enhance the self-control, as the expected have failed.
Dr. Kulandairaj in ‘Impact of Social Media on the Lifestyle of Youth’ have out rightly compared the past lifestyle, which lacked the social media, and the current lifestyle which involves the use of the social media. He highlights the many positive impacts of the media and presents the negative impacts inform of suggestions, considered to enhance the positivity. He argues that the social media has brought people out of the strains of passing the information and general socialization. Whether given as a suggestion or not, Kulandairaj has accepted the fact that, the networking contributes negatively to the lifestyle of the youths. The negative contributions include overuse leading to time wastage, lack of privacy in the personal lives of the youths, indulgence in pornographic images, sharing of unnecessary information and exposure to confusing information among others. In his conclusion, this scholar strongly confirms that the world today cannot do without the social media, considering its vast benefits. Besides, Kulandairaj has highlighted the fact that the managers of the social media have a role in ensuring the promotion of healthy lifestyle among the users (Kulandairaj 28). This he has suggested occurring by appropriately influencing posts of messages, videos, and images among other issues. This I strongly agree. In reality, there is a need for an upper hand to ensure control of the emerging negative impacts of the social media. This can only be explored by the initiators, who understands the mechanical operations behind the networking.
Conclusion
This study has argued on the impacts of social media on the young generation. It has launched a general introduction to the issue, then followed by a summary of the whole opinion. Arguments of four scholarly articles have also been analyzed. All the articles have highlighted the fact that social media have an addictive effect on the youths which make them end up on a hook of negative factors. Though they do not highlight a realistic remedy for the negative influences, except Kulandairaj’s article which coincided with the main claim of this study. Corporate owners of the social media should consider reorganizing their technology to sieve out the potentiality of the spread of the negative effects.
- Kulandairaj, A.J. “Impact of Social Media on the Lifestyle of Youth.” International Journal of Technical Research and Applications, Vol.2(8) (2014): 22-28.
- Shabir, G. and Y.M.Y. & Safdar, G. Hameed. “The Impact of Social Media on Youth: A Case Study of Bahawalpur City.” Asian Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities, Vol. 3(4) (2014): 132-149.
- Siddiqui, S. & Singh, T. “Social Media its Impact with Positive and Negative Aspects.” International Journal of Computer Applications Technology and Research, Vol.5(2) (2016): 74-75.
- Sinha, A. and R.K. & Kanodia, R. Yadav. “Social Media: Positive Vs Negative Effect on Young Generation.” International Journal of Science Technology and Management, Vol. 5(01) (2016): 488-489.