The rise in the use of internet amongst young people has raised concern over the effects that social media could have on the development of the children. Millions of people use social media every day, and the number of children using social media platforms continues to rise at an alarming rate. At least 7.6 million users of social media are children under the age of 17. Even though many social media platforms have the minimum age for creating an account, many teenagers sign in using the details of their parents. Children spend at least five hours a day on the various social media with Facebook being the leading site where many teenagers spend their time. While many parents fail to see any problem with their children using social media, there is a growing concern amongst psychologists that social media could have severe effects on the cognitive, physical and emotional development of the child.
Excessive use of social media by the children can have serious adverse effects on the memory and analytical thinking. Social media has sites are usually loaded with a lot of information that the children could not all store in their memory ( Mills, 2016 ). As a result, the children are sometimes forced to choose the kind of information to store, and the effects of this can be the exposure to inaccurate information thus leading to false memory formation. Such a situation can lead to children growing with false information in their memory and at the same time maintaining confidence in such inaccurate information. Social media also affect the ability of the children to form long-term memory because they do not always make efforts to remember the exact information they obtain from the internet, but instead, they tend to remember the site where the information was obtained. Therefore, social media slows the brain development and long-term memory storage of children.
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Increased social media use amongst the children can lead to shallow thinking. Social media platforms provide an opportunity for children to have instant access to limitless information ( Mills, 2016 ). This removes the need for these youth to engage in any serious cognitive process. The access of a large amount of information at once does not allow the youth to engage in any analytical thinking. They just pass through the information without giving themselves time and effort to analyze and interpret thus leading to shallow thinking. Engaging in cognitive activities is important in the development of the analytical thinking of the brain, but since young people using social media fail to engage in cognitive activity to instant access of a large amount of information, the thinking ability is slowed.
The use of internet amongst children and adolescents involves the ability to multitask, moving between many activities. This leads to the impairment of the social interactions that require the use of cognitively functioning. A primary task that the youth face is learning how to navigate the complex social world around them. As social media consume much of the time, the social cognitive ability of the youth is reduced ( Mills, 2016 ). Taking time to interact with the environment and allowing the brain to engage in a cognitive activity is necessary for increased critical thinking. However, social media takes any free time that the youth have, and this hinders them from engaging in cognitive functioning.
Social media can also affect the emotional development and well-being of both the young and adults. There is evidence linking social media use to increased vulnerability for the onset of depression, poor sleep, and anxiety ( Greenfield, 2014 ). Both the kids and adults using social media have increased chances of developing mental health issues such as depression and sleeplessness. Issues such as cyberbullying can also affect the psychological well-being of the users leading to a person living a life of depression and anxiety. When subjected to depression and anxiety, the youth can further undergo cognitive development problems. A child who is undergoing depression and anxiety as a result of social media will experience slow thinking ability and inability to keep the long-term memory.
Increased use of social media can affect the perception of individual physical development and appearance. Adolescents are usually very sensitive to the physical changes that occur in their body. Through social media, a person may want to compare his/her body with that of other social media friends and then form a perception about their physical growth. It is estimated that at least 30% of the American women do not like the way they look, and 20% of men feel dissatisfied by their physical appearance ( Greenfield, 2014 ). This is mainly caused by the perception people form after seeing the images of other social media users. It is estimated that 20% of men go to the gym because they want to have a bigger body like a friend they have seen in the social media. Therefore, social media can influence the users to form a certain perception about their physical growth and then engage in an activity to either add or reduce their physical body size.
In conclusion, the rise in the use of internet has had many effects on the cognitive, emotional and physical development on the users. Too much information on the internet may slow down the ability of the user to think and reduce the ability of the brain to retain long-term information. It can also hinder emotional development through the creation of depression, anxiety, and sleeplessness.
References
Greenfield, P. M. (2014). Mind and media: The effects of television, video games, and computers . Psychology Press .
Mills, K. L. (2016). Possible effects of internet use on cognitive development in adolescence. Media and Communication , 4 (3), 4-12.
