THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON CHILDREN, ADOLESCENTS AND

FAMILIES: PRONS AND CONS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ADDICTION

Ahmad Hassan

University of Sargodha

PROBLEM STATEMENT
The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of social networking sites on social
lives of generation Y and Z and to find out do the use of social media benefits more or
causes harms more than its benefits.

The study focuses on following research questions:

 Does SNS use affect student learning or academic achievement?

 Do youth activities in SNS influence their personal development in terms of
their psychological well-being?
 Does adolescents participation in SNS expose them to harm or help them
develop relationships?

LITERATURE REVIEW
With advances in the internet and the emergence of web 2.0, new digital age has
brought about extra ordinary developments in technology that has altered the way
many people access and use information. The consistent technological developments
that help connect (world) can be seen as either beneficial or detrimental to human
relationships. Consequently, scholars dive into the potential of internet addiction and
the SNS effects on the other behavioural changes. The predominant SNS users are
adult internet users under age 25 have a profile on SNS (Lehart, 2009).

Recent research indicates that there are frequent online expressions of offline
behaviors, such as bullying, clique-forming, and sexual experimentation, that have
introduced problems such as cyberbullying, privacy issues, and sexting. Other
problems that merit awareness include Internet addiction and concurrent sleep
deprivation (American Academy of Pediatrics, 2011).
A study done by Jaclyn Cabrol of Elon University, examined Generation Y’s
psychological addiction to social media with specific regard to Facebook, MySpace,
Twitter and LinkedIn. The addiction was interpreted using Griffiths’ six components
that determine behavioral addiction: salience, mood modification, tolerance,
withdrawal, conflict and relapse. The purpose of this study was to determine if
Generation Y was in fact addicted to social media because of their need to maintain
relationships with their peers. The results indicated that this sample of Generation Y
suffers from three components, tolerance, salience and relapse. They also suffers from
intrapsychic conflict, but not interpersonal conflict.

This review also includes pertinent studies that deal with adult and young adult
populations. The research literature pertaining to youth (12–18) and SNS is only just
emerging, with few studies that explicitly consider the unique contexts of teenagers.
Many studies consider college-age or young adult users of SNS. While such research
does not consider adolescents as defined earlier, they provide rich theoretical
frameworks and considerations from which to build studies of youth populations. For
example, early studies find that college student use of Facebook is related to positive
relationships to their peers on campus (Ellison, Steinfield, and Lampe,2007). Do media
affect learning? Do video games make children violent? Or do SNS affect the
psychological well being of adolescents? Media effects scholars in a variety of fields
have quickly come to realize that the answers to these questions are more
complex.Very rarely, if ever, is there a direct causal relationship between a technology
and a social outcome such as learning (i.e., Clark, 1983, 1991; Schmidt & Vandewater,
2008).

With millions of users world wide, it raises the question of what types of people rely
on these online social media tools in their interaction with others. Previous research
has established three personality traits that are central to social media use:
extraversion, neuroticism, and openness to experience (Ross et al., 2009, Zywica and
Danowski, 2008). People who are more open experiences tend to be drawn to SNS, as
are those with high levels of neuroticism. Individuals high in neuroticism, as well as
people who are extraverted, also seem to have greater use of instant messages
(Ehrenberg, Juckes, White and walsh, 2008).

Liu (2010) investigated students’ use of different social media tools and their attitudes
and perceptions towards these tools. The author sought to identify the knowledge and
trends of using 16 social media tools that included Facebook, Wiki, YouTube, Bulleting
Board, LinkedIn, Blogs, Twitter, Podcasts, Virtual Worlds, RSS, StumbleUpon, Netlog,
Delicious, Digg, Plurk, and Jaiku. Through an online survey, 221 students were asked
to rate their knowledge level of each social media tool using a Likert scale of 1-4 (1=not
at all knowledgeable, 2=somewhat knowledgeable, 3=knowledgeable, and 4=very
knowledgeable). The results revealed the following: (a) 82%, 77%, and 70% were either
“very knowledgeable” or “knowledgeable” about YouTube, Wiki, and Facebook,
respectively; (b) 42%, 41%, and 39% were “somewhat knowledgeable” about
podcasts, blogs, and forums, respectively; and (c) 42%, 40% and 25% were “not at all
knowledgeable” about virtual worlds, RSS, and Twitter, respectively. The study results
also revealed the top four reasons why students use social media tools. As reported,
85% use such tools for social engagement, 56% use them for direct communications,
48% use them for speed of feedback/results, and 47% use them for relationship
building; however, fewer than 10% of the students mentioned using social media tools
for academic practice.
Studies conducted by the Institute of Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS)
suggested that the high take up of social media applications outside of formal
educational settings provide new opportunities for innovating and modernising
education and training institutions and for preparing learners for the 21 st century.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

1.Generation Y and Z 2.Social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, etc.)

3.Learning Opportunities 4.Socialisation and Communication
5.Facebook Depression 6.Cyberbullying and Online harassment

 Learning Opportunities
 Socialisation and
Social networking communication Generation
Sites (Usage )  Facebook Depression Yand Z
 Cyberbullying and Online
harassment

IV MV DV

It has been found that social networking sites has an impact on the lives of Millennials
and Gen Zers, as engaging in various various forms of social media has become a
routine activity of children and adolescents that research has shown to benefit
children and adolescents by enhancing communication, social connection, and even
technical skills. Social media sites such as Facebook and MySpace offer multiple daily
opportunities for connecting with friends, classmates, and people with shared
interests. During the last 5 years, the number of preadolescents and adolescents using
such sites has increased dramatically. According to a recent poll, 22% of teenagers log
on to their favorite social media site more than 10 times a day, and more than half of
adolescents log on to a social media site more than once a day. Seventy-five percent
of teenagers now own cell phones, and 25% use them for social media, 54% use them
for texting, and 24% use them for instant messaging. Thus, a large part of this
generation’s social and emotional development is occurring while on the Internet and
on cell phones. Because of their limited capacity for self-regulation and susceptibility
to peer pressure, children and adolescents are at some risk as they navigate and
experiment with social media. Recent research indicates that there are frequent online
expressions of offline behaviors, such as bullying, clique-forming, and sexual
experimentation, that have introduced problems such as cyberbullying, privacy issues,
and sexting. Other problems that merit awareness include Internet addiction and
concurrent sleep deprivation.

Thus, this research would indicate to what extent the lives of our children are affected
by using social networking sites. It can also be said that we are interesting in finding
out the prons and cons (mediating variables) of social networking sites (independent
variable) on lives of Millennials and Gen Zers (dependent variables).