By Sarah Zazali
Social media is a free platform for people to connect with one another. The people who we are connected through social media are not just among our family and friends but are from all around the world, including strangers. It is obvious to everyone that the use of social media has become from a niche platform to a tool of substantial user-based and overwhelming popularity over the first decade of the new millennium. The likes of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat are shown to be used widely by millions of users around the globe, among who are mostly teenage users. According to Ranschaert, Ooijen, Simon, Osman Ratib and Parizel (2015), social media has increasingly become famous and acknowledged by the society. In fact, it has also become a trend in every aspect of life.
Furthermore, social media is a good platform to meet and greet with people in cyberspace, seeking and sharing knowledge using social media, yet it is also crucial for teenagers to control the usage of social media on a daily basis. It is firmly believed that massive usage of social media might bring negative impact on the society, especially among teenagers. Based on the study of teens and technology, Madden, Lenhart, Duggan, Cortesi and Gasser (2013) remarked, “about three in four (74%) teens ages 12-17 say they access the Internet on cell phones, tablets, and other mobile devices at least occasionally” (p. 2). In addition, the authors also stated that 95% of the online social media users are among teenagers. Although social media benefits the teenagers socially and academically, there are also some negative impacts, which include education, social behaviour and relationship.
The negative effects of social media on education
To begin with, it is acknowledged that massive usage of social media may negatively affect teenagers’ education simply because social media is addictive and a waste of time. Teenagers would spend most of their time procrastinating and delaying their homework due to the attraction from social media. Moreover, teenagers would rather seek for entertainment through social media than to spend time for a short revision. In fact, teenagers are willing to give up their sleeping schedule in order to make sure that they will not lose the opportunity to be updated with the latest entertainment on social media. For instance, social media like Facebook are now serving its users with various types of games. Teenagers are believed to be more attracted to the games as compared to an informal education or useful information that is spread throughout Facebook. Wu (2013) stated that most students use Facebook for social and entertainment reason. In brief, the solution on how to combat the risk of having teenagers from getting involved in useless sections of social media needs to be sought and implemented.
Next, addiction to games may lead to negative consequences such as getting poor achievement in academic performance due to insufficient rest. Teenagers who have access to the Internet tend to use social media more often and neglect their studies; social media is such a distractor for most teenagers to stay focus in their studies. Junco (2012) emphasised that social media causes more harm than good especially on students’ academic performance and the author also found that students who use social media tend to achieve lower marks in their academic performance. Therefore, parents must play an important role in monitoring their teen children’s frequency of using social media, put a limit on the usage of social media and sanction if their teen children break the rules.
Procrastination also leads teenagers to have insufficient rest, which makes them fall asleep easily in the classroom. Other than that, the effect of having insufficient rest will get these students easily distracted by their surroundings, which clearly depicts that they have lost focus on their teachers or lessons. According to Cabral (2008), “Humans are now more anxious and their attention span is weakened by the over stimulation from technology” (p. 7). It is undeniable that social media is seen to be informative, but it is also undebatable that social media is more of a bane than a boon. In short, it has been clearly proven that teenagers often misuse social media and thus that affects negatively on their education as social media is addictive and a waste of time.
The negative effects of social media on social behaviour
Apart from affecting teenagers’ education, social media may also affect teenagers’ social behaviour. Social behaviour involves the way people behave and interact with one another or with the society. For example, some behaviours include eating, dancing, reading or dressing. These behaviours are imitable, in which, behaviours of the peers can both positively and negatively affect friends’ behaviour and behaviours of the parents can also positively and negatively affect children’s behaviour. This portrays that human beings tend to imitate other human beings and create a feeling of deep admiration for someone.
According to the above statement, the same situation can be applied to how a social media account of a person can influence other users of social media. Female teenagers, specifically, are easily influenced by what other social media users have displayed on their account and perhaps get dissatisfied easily after a visit. Besides that, female teenagers will also have a lower self-esteem after stalking other social media users whom they feel have a far more appealing life than what they have. Research (Vries, Peter, Graaf and Nikken, 2016; Andsager, 2014; Vries, Peter, Nikken and Graaf, 2014; Perloff, 2014) has confirmed that women are most frequently influenced on the internalisation of ideal body image and the standard of beauty, which is spread on social media.
Nevertheless, the truth about social media is that what has been presented on one’s social media are just the selected materials which they would want to show to the whole world; one would conceal the actual behaviour of their real life. As a result, it creates social influences on other female teenagers, which include, body image dissatisfaction, high expectations in life and also how one should think and act. Female teenagers who are dissatisfied with their life will have a lower self-esteem due to peer influence – pressure on changing appearance.
The negative effects of social media on relationship
Nonetheless, a more serious concern is that teenagers in social media may become antisocial which creates a gap between teenagers and their family members or friends. It is crucial to realise the fact that social media connects one person with another, especially, when it comes to the effort to stay connected with family members who are pursuing their studies overseas. It is asserted in a study by Sheldon, Abad and Hinsch (2011) that social media like Facebook allows people to keep in touch although they live far away from one another. This illustrates that social media can be used to maintain a relationship from far.
On the other hand, apart from being connected with family members who are not living under the same roof, social media sometimes can also be deviating. Teenagers often misuse social media, not for communication with their family members, but to be updated with latest gossips and entertainment. Additionally, teenagers may slowly lose intimacy with their friends. These teenagers might be having a lot of followers on social media, yet there are also a probability that their friends are envying their achievement on gaining followers and popularity. As a result of having popularity on social media, the teenagers will only focus on their followers because they do not want to lose their followers and they neglect their real life friends, making them antisocial. This can also be related to the problem of social behaviour of the teenagers.
Furthermore, social media can also be the main cause for frictions. This happens because social media develops the feeling of jealousy between spouses – whenever they saw their spouse commenting or conversing with the opposite gender – which may lead to a divorce. To make it worse, the feeling of jealousy between spouses will not yield a normal friendship after breaking up. Research papers on relationship versus social media (Papp, Danielewicz and Cayemberg, 2012; Marshall, 2012) have agreed that social media causes jealousy due to constant visits to an ex-spouse’s social media account and seeing their ex-significant other interacting with others. This depicts that excessive use of social media can result in misunderstandings among spouses.
Correspondingly, the same condition can be applied to teenagers’ romantic relationship with their partners. These teenagers, instead of building a peaceful friendship after a break-up, both might become enemies due to constant visits to their ex’s profile. In brief, newsfeed on social media causes these teenagers to keep monitoring their ex-partners, which may lead to jealousy and create enemies instead of allies.
Conclusion
It is clear from the above account that social media no doubt produces benefits to the teenagers socially and academically, yet it also has negative impacts which include education, social behaviour and relationship. There is also a threatening side of social media and it is believed that more action needs to be taken to protect the younger generations. Especially when the number of social media users is now increasing, this means the threat to vulnerable users will also rise. One of the steps that can be enforced is to educate the teenagers on the danger of excessive usage of social media.
Additionally, social media should also play a role by taking the initiative to prevent and to control teenagers from using social media for the wrong purposes. The initiative should be focused on further strengthening the regulations of using social media such as requiring users to provide their personal identification before signing in to any social media. This regulation helps to verify the user’s age and to identify whether users are still under age by leaving no options for the users except to obligatorily provide their personal information, which is legally justified from the government. For instance, teenagers who are still students will have to provide their identity card number and information about their institution including their matric number. On further note, this regulation will also help in ensuring students not to misuse the social media other than benefitting from it. In other words, students will utilise social media cautiously. Another method would be for social media sites to improve and maintain their users’ safety since there are many possibilities for the teenagers to fall into the traps of the scammers on social media.
In comparison, moderation is key for us Moslems. Mentioned in the Qur’an, “And do not make your hand [as] blamed and insolvent.” [17:29]. This verse originally illustrates how God instructs mankind not to spend their money excessively. However, it can also refer to how God commands mankind not to expose themselves exaggeratedly into something, such as, the use of social media. In addition, two Hadiths have also reported on how Islam promotes moderation in seeking worldly things — It was narrated from Jabir bin Abdullah that the Messenger of Allah ( صلى الله عليه وسلم) said: “O people, fear Allah and be moderate in seeking a living, for no soul will die until it has received all its provision; take that which is permissible and leave that which is forbidden.” [Sahih (Darussalam), Vol. 3, Book 12, Hadith 2144].
Social media is surely a good means to build plenty of connections and to get free education online. However, teenagers are a vulnerable group of young generations who need to be protected from any harm which comes from social media. Thus, society and organisations need to take action and initiatives in order to resolve the problem where teenagers often misuse social media. ***