The Social Media Phenomena: Cyberbullying and Sexting

Abstract:

One of the undeniable factors of technological era is that social media is an integral part of modern community. In our modern world, especially children and teenagers are active users of these networks. Sometimes this utilization can become an addiction and have a bad effect on young generation. The present study aimed to identify the correlation between the main influence objectives of social media on children and the methods against of this impact. The research is mainly based on demonstration of current threats which caused by social media such as cyberbullying, sexting, depression and lack of privacy. Results showed that all above mentioned causes can seriously affect children’s behavior and future mental development.

There are several definitions of social media. In general, we can say that social media is a technological platform which allows individuals to share information, ideas and interests between each other. In an ever-evolving world there are several big social network companies that provide their services such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. All mentioned social platforms are very famous networks for young generation. Recent research revealed that social platforms became addiction for teenagers and children. The main reasons of that are while using these networks they are extending their social worlds, working independently and learning a lot of new information. (Irvine, 2008). Year after the year the number of adolescents and teenagers who are actively using these platforms are increasing.

However, social media is not always beneficial for teenagers. Sometimes these platforms can influence adolescents in a bad way. One of the most encountered threats of social platforms is cyberbullying. The main idea of this threat is bullying through digital devices. Cyberbullying can occur while sending messages, text and apps of negative and harmful content to someone else. It can also happen while sharing private information with another person. This is obvious that cyberbullying can easily affect children in school ages. According to the research by Cyberbullying Research Center, survey between 4441 teens revealed that cyberbullying can occur when someone continuously makes fun of another individual via online platform and send different messages of negative content (Hinduja & Patchin, 2010). Additionally, their research also showed that the most spread source of cyberbullying in social media platforms is Facebook. Moreover, another survey by School Crime Supplement (SCS) conducted between students age of 12-18 years who were reported to being bullied. Results showed that more than 15% of these students were bullied by online or text content. All above mentioned surveys and arguments are prove that cyberbullying is a real hazard for children and teenagers. However, there are some coping strategies which can significantly reduce the impact level of cyberbullying. Mainly, 2 types of coping strategies investigated by this research. These strategies are support seeking and technical strategies (Machmutow, Perren, Alsaker & Sticca, 2012). By using support seeking strategy, students are asking their parents for help in case of cyberbullying (Slonje and Smith, 2008). However, some students are not recommending to ask their parents for help because they think that their parents can ignore this situation and will not take it as serious problem. (Smith, 2008). Secondly, one of the most convenient technical solution strategies is blocking and deleting all kind of threatening messages (Kowalski, Limber and Agatston, 2008). After blocking these types of messages, adolescents could avoid of encountering with cyberbullying. By using all mentioned strategies, impact level of cybervictimization could be significantly diminished.

The previous paragraph has analyzed cyberbullying on social media. In this part of paper another crucial impact of social media on children will be discussed. In 21st century, sexting became one of the most debated topics of social media. Considering various definitions of sexting, one of them is sending and receiving sexually explicit images, texts through social media and different online social platforms. The term of sexting has been changed in over than 10 years. In the past this term was used to include sending text-based messages of sexual content. However, now when modern technology became more convenient, videos and photos of sexual content are also included to these messages. (Albury, Funnell and Noonan, 2010). Despite of the fact that some people may enjoy sending and receiving messages of sexual content, research shows that teenage girls were reported to being traumatized by the illegal distribution of private images. (Ringrose, 2012). One of the important widespread concerns was convincing teenager girls via online social platform. The main problem was acting as peers of those girls and asking them to send naked photos by online swindlers (Marwick, 2008; Shade, 2007). According to previous mentioned research, sexting can cause to serious problems in the future such as mental trauma and social isolation. However, during testimony online safety expert Parry Aftab claimed that, the majority of teenagers are not dreaming to do some sexual actions in real life. They are using social media platforms because of sharing some sextual content between each other for their own pleasure and this can cause serious consequences as mentioned before (Aftab, 2006). Sexting in general can happen between preadolescents. In order to prevent this behavior between teenagers, parents should intervene to their social network use. Some trainings should be organized for parents in order to help with better understanding of this term. When parents are aware of all bad influence of sexting and cyberbullying, they can easily prevent this widespread threat between their children.

In the next section another significant threat of social media, so called Facebook depression will be analyzed. Depression in general is the most common health issue that can impact college students and teenagers. Over the last years the rate of reports about depression by college students has increased more than 56% (Hunt & Eisenberg, 2010). It is not accidental situation that at the same time more than 90% of the students are active users of Facebook (Ellison & Steinfield, 2007). One of the most popular features of Facebook is “update your status”. While using this feature, college students are sharing their thoughts with public audience such as “Tom is feeling sad today”. These status updates are available for this student’s peers as profile is generally public (Lewis & Kaufman, 2008). These posts are using by students in order to disclose the symptoms of depression with other peers and while reading this type of posts, other peers easily could be affected. The main idea of this impact was associated with sharing depression of one teenager with another and by doing so, depression could be easily spread to other peers. In order to avoid this depression on preadolescents, some strict age control rules should be set in this type of social platforms. Some age identification filters can easily identify the age of preadolescents and put restriction to the access to these social platforms. When it comes to adolescents, as mentioned above for sexting, some parental control should be very helpful in order to avoid this depression.

Rapid growth in the level of social media use can easily create an issue of privacy. Sharing false and too much information about other people and improper use of social media are the main sources of this problem. While visiting different websites and sharing information in social platforms such as Facebook, teenagers can easily leave some evidence of which website they visited. This term is called “digital footprint” (Greysen, 2010). Leaving evidence after sharing information, can affect children and teenagers’ future reputations. Research show that teenagers are tend to share inappropriate information or posts, videos and photos without understanding the main hazard for their future. This “footprint” is visible to other users of social network and as a result in the future, they can put job and university acceptance to the risky situation.

In conclusion, therefore, in our modern technological era despite of the benefits, there are lots of negative impacts of social media on young generation. According to the research that described above, it can be supposed that cyberbullying, sexting, Facebook depression and privacy issues are main central objectives of this bad influence. In order to eliminate or reduce the level of this impact, some prevention measures such as parental control, organization of various trainings and increasing the privacy security level in different social network platforms should be implemented.

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