The Influences of Social Media Among Teenagers (3rd Writing Task)

By: Nita Hardika

March, 15^th 2014

Beside "My Future Plans" that I've posted before, this is also the task of Writing course. The topic is about social media. My lecturer gave us this topic because as we know that nowadays, social media become one of famous things in the world that used by people in around the world. And I take "The Influences of Social Media Among Teenagers" as title because I also experienced it. So, here it is.

The development of  information and communication technology in this era globalization  increasly advanced.  The technological advances bring influences in daily life, especially for teenagers.  We can’t denied that the presence of the internet as the effect of technological advances increasingly needed in daily life as provider of information and communication.  Through internet, teenagers can acces social media so easily to communicate with their friends. Moreover, almost every people, especially teenagers, have gadget or smartphone to acces social media easily.  The development internet and smartphone also influence to the growing use of social media.  Nowadays. life style of teenagers who don’t always want to be considered outdated and want to maintain their existence, making them look for a new place to express their desire.  Social media for them has become a sort of trend to be followed.  Therefore, they make some social media account that popular in around them, such as facebook, twitter, path, BBM, and so on.

Using social media is among the most common activity of today’s teenagers.  Any social media that allows social interaction with others.  But, there are some positive and  negative influences that brought by social media to users, especially to teenagers as active users of social media. In general, the positive influence of social media is easily to communicate with people in around the world.  Usually, they communicate with their community.  They can still communicate with their old friend or justconnected to far living friends.  Moreover, they can  get more new friends from social media that they used.  Then we can learn about people with varied backgrounds.  Teenagers can get friends from  any district.  They can stay to connect with people who don’t know before.  Wherever  they are, and  no matter how far they are from  us, we are still able to connect and to socialize with them.  Through social media, They can share own  interest to others, discuss important topics, or just share moments, share their own experiences.  So that, teenagers can spend time to online on social media to express everything that they want to share to others.

Not only that, but also we can get money from social media.  As we know that many people can  get benefits from social media, such as online shop.  Nowadays, many teenagers do it to get benefit from their effort. Beside as a student, they also as a freelance from it.

Beside positive influences, there are some negative influences that brought by social media. When we talk about social media, we also talk about language that they usually use on social media.  Social media give influences to language used in daily life.  Many teenagers usually used slang when they communicate on  social media with their community.  They create new words that understood by them.  Language used is also influenced by their idol.  Teenagers usully use it as existence.  Actually, language used that they get from social media, is also used in real life as daily language by teenagers.  There are  many new words that appear from social media. Sometimes we can’t understand what people talk. Because that new words seem sounds strange.  So, it’s not relevance with real bahasa.

Social media gave  very strong effect on daily lives of teenagers.  They can be autism because of social media.  They become addicted.  They can spend much time to online through social media that they use.  They can stay on  their badroom a few hours for just holding their gadget or smartphone to stay connected with their community.  It is definitely wasting time.  If  teens are getting addicted to social media, lazyness close to them.  They more happy wasting their time with online than just reading book.  It definitely can effect to their value of school.

Social media also give influence to teens’s behaviour. From autism become individualism.  As I said before that teenagers can stay on  their badroom a few hours for just holding their gadget or smartphone to stay connected with their community.  It can make they are too busy in the cyberspace without think others in their real life.  They are too busy with their own things.  They active in the cyberspace, but it doesn’t in the real life.  Also through social media, teens are developing a sense of  who they are and where they fit into their community and the world.  It encourages narcissistic behavior in  teenagers and definitely it make teenagers highly self confidence.  They posted  their photos, they expressed  what they felt. But, it doesn’t really bad effect for teenagers.  

The bad thing is caused by social media, is crime. Social media  is also one of  places that used to crime.  One of  kind crimes that usually happen  in cyberspace through social media is fraud.  Teenagers become a victim because of that.  There are many news that tell about this incident. But most of causes happen through facebook.  This incident began when a teenage acquaintance with a man that she knows via facebook. 

That’s all the influences of social media among teenagers.  There are many positive influences that brought by social media, but in other hand  there are also negative influences of social media.  Good or bad anything, it depend on ourselves.  We can take the positive influences, but don’t take the  negative.  Teenagers as active user of social media should be able to maintain themselves.  Just use it appropriately, don’t use over.  Because with it, we will be protected from the bad things.