We live in a world world based on technology and the internet as a whole. A world where things like Facebook and Twitter are huge aspects of most teenagers’ everyday lives. We have come to a time when people talk through a screen more often than they talk in real life. Social media empires have an iron grip on the way that people live and do things on a day to day basis. Where are we headed next?
Take a look at the way social media had integrated itself into the life of an average high school life. In a survey with 75 high school students, 34.5% said that they are on a social media network once every day. 32% said that they are on a social media network two to four hours daily. Only 9.3% of students said that they do not use social networks.
Average Time Spent Using Social Networks:
| Average time Spent on a social network: | Once a Month: | Once A Week: | 2+ Times each week: | Once Daily: | 2-4 times a day: | 5+ hours a day: |
| Percent of Students of 75 students surveyed: | 12% | 5.4% | 1.3% | 34.5% | 32% | 5.4% |
Social networks are a main part of life for most teenagers. “I personally have all of the people that I want to talk to on my phone. Who cares if someone is ‘gearing up for the party on Friday?’ Status updates are pointless to me,” sophomore Graden Sikes said. After school each day, Facebook and Twitter are buzzing with activity and life. So the question is, how does social networking effect daily life as a whole?
“Facebook removes people’s ineptitude to say and do nice things,” sophomore Talon Trueblood said. “Social networking makes it so that people have shorter and duller conversations with less depth.”
According to Trueblood, conversations that people have over Facebook and Twitter are never as full or extensive as face-to-face meetings. People talk with abbreviations and cut their thoughts short because it is too much to type. Even when teens do have conversations, it just isn’t the same. “It helps people say what they want to say without any care in the world because there is no repercussion online,” Trueblood says. “People can say hurtful things and get away with it. Cyber bullying is a big problem.”
In another survey, 41 percent of students say that social networking affects the use of social skills outside the cyber world. When asked, most high school students agreed that teenagers don’t talk in person as much and that they do not get the full reaction when they are not talking face to face.
In addition to affecting social skills, Facebook and Twitter can also have a huge impact on high school relationships. “It can promote them but it can also wreck them,” sophomore Peter Muelling said. “Relationships are turning into things where people just update their Facebook statuses and call itdating. Couples aren’t really communicating face to face anymore.” “Almost all teenagers, including me, talk to their girlfriend or boyfriend over Facebook or text more than they do in real life.” Muelling says. “When teenage couples always speak over IM, Facebook, or e-mail, the sentimental ideals are lost. Things are simply not a romantic when you are talking through a screen. You cannot kiss or hug through a computer or a phone.”
With the communication era expanding and growing by the day, society is becoming more and more affected by social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and tumblr. Conversations and relationships between teenagers are more digital than they are real. Social media has literally integrated itself into society as a whole.
