3 Ways Social Media Negatively Influence Children.

Today, we are growing with technology, or rather forced to grow with it. All our daily activities including work and personal lives are heavily influenced by technology. Social Media is one part of that technology that has influenced us greatly. Began with the idea of ‘connecting people’, today social media is more than that. It is used for letting people know what’s new with us, things that we are doing, the places we are visiting and traveling to, the food that we are eating and even has become our solution for boredom. Social Media has influenced children too along the way, it is estimated that on an average children spend close to 5 hours on social media daily. All of it has resulted in certain negative consequences as well, such as

False Validation: Self Esteem is a key factor in our personal growth. It is the way we define our strengths, capabilities and value. In short, it is how we define ourselves. One develops self esteem in their childhood, mainly from parents and those around them. Things that the parents say and their behavior (positive or negative) towards the child has a heavy influence on a child’s self esteem. Today, apart from parents, social media too is playing a role in a child’s development of self esteem. Early exposure to social media results in the exposure to the features of likes and comments. A child gets attracted to this factor as they understand that there are people to see them and appreciate them in social media. A child naturally would want to be accepted and liked by those around them. Hence, posts are put up by them with the same intention. 

If a post is liked by many in their social media, a child would be happy by the same. However, if a post is not liked by many, they would become upset. They would start to wonder the reason why, and may blame themselves and start to be adamant about people liking their posts. Thus, a child’s sense of value and validation of who they are may get influenced by the likes and comments they get. This would influence their mood, making them feel angry or sad due to lack of likes. Often they would refuse to talk to people and do their daily activities. The anger could be shown towards those around them as well. Slowly, a child’s happiness, self worth and value becomes dependent on the likes that they get in social media, rather than their strengths, capabilities and relationships around them. 

Comparison: Few years back Instagram intended to create a social media platform for teenagers alone. The ideal target of course being the teenagers. However, the idea was dropped after the study and results on the platform showed that it had created profound insecurity among the teenagers who started using the platform. One of the main reasons for this insecurity being comparison among the teenagers. As the saying goes, one of the easiest ways to ruin someone’s happiness is to compare them with someone else. This is what is happening with the children who spend quite a lot of time in social media. They start to compare themselves with others, for their lifestyle, pictures added and likes and follows. These comparisons start to become unhealthy and end up affecting them emotionally and mentally. They begin to think and feel that others' lives are better and they are so much happier than them. Comparison also leads to the thoughts that they need to have certain possessions like others in order to be happy and feel good about themselves. They become desperate to show others how good their lives are which results in a need for approval from others. Studies today show that 32% of children deal with depression who spend at least 3 hours on social media. These comparisons often lead to anxiety, stress, frustration, decreased focus on studies and affect their daily routine.

Lack of Focus: As I said before, social media has become our solution for many things, such as boredom, stress, leisure etc. Today, children as well are using social media for similar reasons. How good is this solution though?, especially for children. I noticed that 8 out of 10 students who come for a session, come to deal with lack of focus, on studies especially. During my interaction with them, many of them indicated that they feel bored or lose focus after 20 mins of studying, and tend to use phones with the intention of taking a break. The intended break time would be 10 mins, however without their own knowledge it becomes an hour. Where did the time go? Most of them had this question. If you think about it, where did the time go indeed? Most of us might agree that it is easy to lose track of time when we are on social media, there is so much to see. Children not just lose their time but their ability to keep their focus as well. They might think about the things they saw on social media while studying, which will in fact make them want to use social media more. As long as the phone is near to them while studying it is easy to lose focus and switch to phone usage. Their ability to sustain focus becomes drastically affected. Thus, a limit is essential. 

Thus, it is important to not just limit their time on social media, but also to make sure that the things they view too are healthy for them. Today, social media is not merely a platform to connect with one another, it influences a child’s time, mood and emotional wellbeing.