Justyce Schilz Ms. Lehmann English 2-1B 7 February 2020 How Social Media Impacts Teens Is social media affecting vulnerable teens? Social media has had both good and bad impacts on teens. Teens should be responsible users of social media because social media impacts teens’ well-being, social connectedness, and academic achievement. In examining social media’s impact on well-being, it is clear the connections are complex. How we use social media impacts our well-being. Social media has both positive and negative 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 communicate anonymously can mitigate barriers, such as shame, that interfere with support-seeking offline” (72).Being able to anonymously ask for help has a positive impact on teens’ lives because it allows people to ask for help without feeling judged so that they can get the help they need. Having considered the positive impacts 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 adults use 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 brings teens together but also separatesthem from face-to-face connections. This study shows that teens are communicating more on social media than they are in person. Over the years, teens’ social media interactions have increased while face-to-face communications have decreased substantially. The survey conducted by CSM says that,“Only 32 percent say their favorite way to communicate with friends is in person (dropping 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). Social media has taken a heightened role in vulnerable teens’ lives. Teens are communicating more on social media than they are in person. This study shows that it’s a young adult’s personality that determines social media’s impact. “The 17 percent who scored lower in the low-SEWB group were the most impacted by social media interactions, suggesting that the child’s personality – not the platform – is the more important factor when determining the influence of social media” (K.Y. 18). Everyone has a different personality, so we cannot always know how social media affects everyone; it depends on the person. Social media has made many new connections but it has also put up barriers with our face-to-face interactions with each other. 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 help minimize the impact on teens’ well-being.Teens like social media and have started spending more time on it, sothey lose face-to-face connections and should become aware of how they use it. The amount of time teens spend on social media has an indirect impact on their academic achievement. Luckily, teens can control this if they choose to do so. So, teens are being impacted by social media in both good and bad ways. Teens need to learn how to use social media responsibly and effectively. Works Cited 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.2016-1785F. Accessed 21 January 2020. K.Y. “Social Media and Teens.” School Library Journal, Vol. 64, no. 10, Oct. 2018, pp 18-18. Academic Search Premier. Accessed 21 January 2020. Peiró- Velert, Carmen, Alexandra Valencia-peris, Luis M. González, Xavier Garcia- Massó, Pilar Serra Añó, and José Devis- Devis. “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. Accessed 10 February 2020.
Research Paper Reflection
Please answer all questions in complete, grammatically correct sentences.
Explain the process you went through to write this paper. Please be specific.
~The process we went through to write this paper was to start with choosing a topic that interested us, then we did some research by reading articles and finding quotes, and then we made an outline. Once we had all the information we needed we started to write our paper. At the end of the paper we made sure to include a works cited page.
What qualifies this paper as an argumentative essay? What are the requirements for this genre and how did you meet them?
~ There has to be a claim, a rebuttal,then there needs to be evidence to support your claim, and you have to have a worked cited page. You have to make sure the information is reliable. We met these requirements by reading reliable articles and took quotes from the articles to support our evidence in our paper. At the end of the paper we made sure to add a works cited page.
Explain one thing you learned about reading research or taking notes on research that you can apply to your next research paper.
~I learned how to pick out important pieces of evidence that would be useful to my paper. I learned how to set up a works cited page at the end of my paper. I will apply these skills to my next research paper by looking for the evidence in reliable articles and make sure to cite them at the end of my paper.