127 Technologies Influence on Developing Adolescents

Technology today is not like the technology even 10 years ago. It is highly accessible and challenging for parents to regulate, even when used for educational purposes. It is an addictive resource that many parents have begun to take advantage of because, for some reason, it makes parenting easier than before. However, it is nothing but the contrary because it leads to behavioral issues, social anxiety, and poor manners or any ability to understand authority and personal imagination.

Social Media Today

This starts with electronic media because social media has a drastic impact on adolescents today. Specifically, tweens, meaning middle school- high school era. Today, the time spent on social media is much broader than it was 10 years ago. Now there are multiple different types of social media, depending on which app and how you’re using it, which depicts how regulated it is. Regulation may be spam accounts, catfishing, or cyberbullying. All occurred 10 years ago and still occurs today. It is more likely more regulated now because social media has been around for a little bit, and so the knowledge of criminals on the internet is more well known. When you dissect these issues it can be defined as comparing body types, risking sexual initiation, and exposure to drugs and/or alcohol (Ray et all. 2010).

Influence on Adolescents

Children and adolescents tend to struggle to separate fantasy from reality. This is why it is so detrimental when exposing violent video games to young kids because then they may go to school or in public and pretend to “shoot other people” as if they were in the video game. After all, they don’t understand that it isn’t socially acceptable to pretend to murder people. It creates this fake world in their mind and creates many issues outside of the family. It creates social issues and difficulties learning because their mind is distracted and wants to be elsewhere because video games and social media can be so addictive. It creates a fantasy world that their minds can’t understand.

References

Mollborn, Stefanie, et al. “A Life Course Framework for Understanding Digital Technology Use in the Transition to Adulthood.” Advances in Life Course Research, vol. 47, 2021, pp. 100379–100379, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.alcr.2020.100379.

Ray, M., Jat, K.R. Effect of electronic media on children. Indian Pediatr 47, 561–568 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13312-010-0128-9