The first article “The impact of social media on Children, Adolescence, and Families” gave detailed information and stats about how a recent poll found that 22% of teens log onto their favorite social media site more than 10 times a day (I can see that happening) 75% of the teenagers own cell phones today (I feel sorry for the 25% that don’t, when I was a teen growing up it was rare to have a cell phone unless your mom let you hold hers. It’s the norm for teens to have a cell phone now.) 25% use them for social media, 54% for texting and 24% for instant messaging. This article showed the pros and cons of teens using social media sites but it did highlight one thing that was the detachment of the parents when it comes to these social media platforms. It is a good practice to know what your children are doing and what sites they are going on but in all actuality, just like they have monitoring programs, they also have stealth programs.
Parents can do their best but that’s not going to put an end to the “Dangers of Social Media” it is dangerous out here and some kids don’t belong posting on the Internet. If I had kids I would try my best to make sure I am in tune with whatever they have going on especially when it comes to social media because I know how it was in chat rooms in the 90’s, so I would try to curve any of those activities. I would also try to make sure my kid wasn’t getting bullied or bullying online. I’ve seen teens getting into trouble for “sexting” because they didn’t know better. I feel that one thing parents can do is stress the fact that whatever gets put on the Internet pretty much stays there and how that can affect them in the future. For all the bad, you have good uses as well, it can keep a teen in contact with friends and out of state family, and it’s also a networking tool that if used responsibly can be cool for everyone. I don’t think social media is negative, I don’t think a weapon is negative; It’s all in how you use it.
The next article was talking about how Facebook users are getting their getting their news now, I never really noticed but I will look now, I do know that some sites that I go on often appear on my timeline though but whatever this new method is, I see a few newspaper companies trying to get on board with the new wave!
