I've had these thoughts and mixed feelings about social networks on my mind for about a week now. I've heard so many different points of view about whether or not social networks are good for you, or bad for you. On the good side it is said that social networks help teens to build, perform, articulate, and develop friendships. This is said to be what social networks provide for young adults. I believe this is what they were created to do, but they fail. In my opinion social networks are completely unnecessary. I believe they tarnish children's self esteem and promote a need to be liked or accepted.
Popularity! The image shows a picture from my daybook of notes I took while reading about social networks. The word that stood out to me was popularity! Social networks create the need for kids to feel and be popular. They create a false image of what's cool and what's not. Personally, I believe social networks impact a child's social development negatively by creating false images of what acceptable, and teaching kids how to be someone they're not, thus leading to low self esteem. What do y'all think?!
I believe that social network can show the youth that there are people out there just like them. I believe that mass media tarnishes the individuals self esteem by idolizing someone because they are beautiful smart or athletic. Social networking helps those children that feel like they are alone feel like they actually belong to something.
ReplyDeleteSocial networks can bring the illusion of friendships and connections but in truth you can never get as close to someone as to when you spend actual face to face time with them. Social networks can be deceiving and tends to promote superficial relationships.
ReplyDeleteI like reading the different ideas in comments and posts here. I think that social media in many ways may just make visible bullying and shaming, etc, that went on before anyway. Maybe it gives some kids outlets to connect to other people in the face of that. In my own use of social media as an adult (I got my first email address in college- yes, I'm old!) I notice that the online connections are awesome in supporting carrying through with f2f time I get with different groups. And in a few cases I connected with people first in social media (twitter) and then got to know them in person, like when I finally met them at a conference or something like that.... anyway I think it's complicated.
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