Today a substantial psychological impact on the human mind and subconscious is exerted by the mass media services. In some cases, this information can be dangerous. We are going to tell you about the dangers of social media for youth as long as the youth is the most vulnerable and essential social group. So if you want to save yourself from the negative impact of social media go on reading!
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What are the dangers of social media?
If you know the ways the social media affects you, you will be able to finds ways to protect your mind.
1. Commercial danger
The historical background for the emergence of the mass media is associated with the development of entrepreneurial activity, the development of trade and industry, the transition from an agrarian to an industrial society and, as a result, the urgent need to regularly inform large groups of people about new products.
Scientific and technical progress that ensured the emergence of fundamentally new means of collecting, processing and distributing information led to a revolution in mass communications at the end of the twentieth century.
The creation of satellite communications, cable radio, and television, the mass distribution of computers and the Internet contributed to the formation of the global information networks and the possibility of distributing the necessary information to any corner of our planet. Nobody wants to buy unknown goods, so everyday more and more entrepreneurs pay for the advertisement crazy many to sell their products successfully. In other words, social media decide what you have to buy.
2. Emotional danger
A well-known and somewhat cynical journalistic opinion: the more they write about victims and catastrophes, the more viewers and readers are drawn to these contents. That is why during the first minutes of television news and in the front pages of newspapers journalists always speak about large and small tragic events. The mass media appeals to a person`s strongest and most intense experiences and feelings.
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3. Personal danger
The media has a specific advantage over an individual and even an audience. Under the modern information system, they are almost doomed to play the role of the object of media influence.
4. Visual danger
A special danger presents television; sometimes it can be substituted by live streams or videos. It is not only the most massive but also the most effective kind of interference into human consciousness. People trust more the things that they have seen more than the things that they have heard. Visual information is easily perceived and better remembered by the audience. Of course, the data may differ from the reality. But the picture on the screen becomes a reality for us, and we absorb it.
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Other dangers of social media on youth
Television, the Internet, video technology and even music influence the behavior of young people, their moral values and life attitudes. The influence of media nowadays is stronger than such social institutions of personality formation as school or family. Reading books, which traditionally is the principal means of acquiring knowledge and moral development, has lost its popularity.
First of all the psychological influence is worth mentioning. For example, young girls see the beauties on Instagram and fail to think that these gorgeous bodies and faces came through a number of filters. The girls try to reach this distant ideal look and gain complexes and stress. By the way, it has already been mentioned that it is easier to rule the mass in stress than sober-thinking individuals with healthy self-esteem.
Speaking about young boys, the rich mode of life is imposed upon them. Nobody thinks how cool it is to be educated, but everybody thinks that it is cool to be dangerous and rich. Moreover, the rates of juvenile crimes are incredibly high in all the countries all around the world because the youth sees aggression and violence every day on the Internet and the television.
The second direction includes threats associated with the destabilization of the social continuity of generations. It has been officially proved yet, but the countries – leaders in the world economy, are constantly influencing other states. The informational war is about the sphere of interests, so instead of traditional Nigerian values and the ideas of national reunion young people dream about becoming European or American models and rappers.
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According to the opinion of psychologists, the content absorbed by the youth from social media is one of the most traumatic factors of media influence on the mental and physical condition of young people. Mostly, this refers to violence that is often demonstrated in films, books, videos, games, and news on the television. Studies show that the constant viewing of scenes of violence diminishes sensitivity to aggression, reduces the importance of internal factors that restrain it, and increases the actual manifestations of aggressiveness in human behavior.
So, the youth is a group of people that can be easily affected by the media because of their age. The young people have no life experience that is why they are a tabula rasa for all sources of the information. There is no need to deprive the youth of watching television or of surfing the Internet. The fundamental idea of parenting is to explain to their children about the existence of millions of points of view. So educate them to read/watch/listen to at least two different opinions and develop their critical thinking and the ability to dispute. Only this way we can save our future.
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Source: Legit.ng