Youth Use Social Media to Strengthen Friendship. Good or Bad?

Nowadays, there are a lot of teenager use Social Media to strengthen their friendship. There is no question that friendships are important to teen life but is that good or bad for using social media to strengthen friendship?

There are 57% of teenagers ages 13 to 17 have made a new friend online. There are 29% of teens show that they have made more than five new friends in online venues. Most of these friendships stay in the digital space while only 20% of all teenager have met an online friend in person.

Image source: Google

• Social media : 72% of all teens spend time with friends via social media; 23% do so daily.

Image source : Google

Advantages of teenager use social media to strengthen friendship

1) preventing bullying

Research has shown that having at least one solid friendship can go a long way in preventing bullying. In fact, bullies often target teens that are alone or isolated but teens that have a core group of friends often have a built-in layer of protection from bullying.

Image sources: Google

2) Keep contact with the friend

Long distance may destroy friendship while social media has the potential to overcome many barriers in building friendships. As an example, I still remember that the day my childhood friend moved to China, so we can use social media to keep in contact.

3) Helps teenager feel more connected to their friends’ feelings and daily lives

Based on Pew Research Centre statistics,

• 83% of teen social media users say social media makes them feel more connected to information about their friends’ lives.

• 70% of social media using teens feel better connected to their friends’ feelings through social media.

• 68% of teen social media users have had people on the platforms supporting them through challenging times.

Social media offers teens a place to receive support from others during challenging times, and this may helps teenagers feel more connected to their friends’ feelings and daily lives.

Disadvantages of teenager use social media to strengthen friendship

1) May cause jealousy, envy and low self-esteem

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As a friend or family member captures every moment of their life on Instagram, it may get struggle.  It is not impossible that relationships might be forever damaged because jealousy leads to hurt, anger, and harmful words or actions that cannot be deleted easily .

Based on the researcher Julie Pennell :

• 53% of teens who use social media have seen people post about events to which they were not invited.

• 42% have had someone post things on social media about them that they cannot change or control.

• 21% report show the worse feeling about their own life because of what they see from other friends on social media.

source by https://www.teenvogue.com/story/how-technology-and-social-media-affect-teen-friendships

2) The decrease in productivity levels

Social media is very engaging and leads to teenagers spending a lot of time on them. They may disregard their school work, extra-curricular activities and even their family, so they can chat about different things not related to schoolwork. This clearly reduces

their productivity levels. Teenagers even start failing in school work and may end up being addicted to social media platforms.

After all, the teenagers who use social media to strengthen friendship must clearly realize the pros and cons because social media will bring you a lot of disadvantages if do not use it in the right ways.

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