Introduction
Social media usage is prominent in high school where affects students are adversely both in their social lives and academic pursuits. An overwhelming majority of high school students use social media, mainly through their mobile phones. Indeed, a lot of the informal interaction that takes place amongst high school students takes place on social media networks. Failure to use social media may leave a student feeling like a pariah. Consistent use of social media and its multimedia content capability reduces high school life into living under a microscope (Salomon & Brown, 2019). Most students live artificialized lives to reflect on how they would want their peers to perceive them. Secondly, online bullying which mainly happens on social media augments the negative effects of social media. Finally, social media is potentially additive, or in the very least can take up too much of a student’s time, thus negatively affecting academic performance. The overall effect of social media on high school students is thus a negative one.
Artificializing of Normal Activities
Social media negatively affects the social lives of high school students by causing them to live a partially or fully artificialized life, due to the constant monitoring it creates. Social media provides users, especially young people with an avenue to display their daily activities through photos, video clips, audio clips and written word. Such content includes issues such as dressing, food and leisure activities (Salomon & Brown, 2019). Normally, each post will attract reactions from other social media users such as “likes”, and comments, which may be positive or negative. Further, in a close community such as a school, it is common for some students to post content about others or about group activities. All the above posting of content creates an element of surveillance where the activities of each student are under the semblance of a microscope. Ordinarily, each student would want to get positive posts and avoid any negative ones (Salomon & Brown, 2019). It is important to note that high school students are at a sensitive age between the ages of 14 and 18, which makes them overly self-conscious. Therefore, instead of acting as they would like to or as they are supposed to in school, students will act and behave in a manner that will present them positively to their peers. Some will experiment in dressing, what they eat, the kind of relationships they have or even in the use of drugs. Such behavior robs young people or a positive and healthy social life at a sensitive stage on their social development to their detriment.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Online Bullying
The second important negative effect of social media for high school students is the problem of online bullying. Online bullying happens when a student or group of students regularly post content on social media with the intention of hurting another student (Bellmore et al., 2017). Ordinarily, the bully is in a position of power as compared to the victim. For example, the bully may be more popular than the victim is. Online bullying is a major problem in American High Schools. Die to the prominence of social media usage in the schools, online bullying is highly successful as most of the student's peers get to see negative content once shared. In extreme cases, online bullying breeds real-life bullying as other students use the content posted on social media to harass the bullying victim in school (Bellmore et al., 2017). For example, a bully may post nude pictures of a fellow student. Other students may print out the pictures and leave them strategically around the school in a move to embarrass the victim. Online bullying leads to stress, depression and in extreme cases, the suicide of the victim. In some cases, bullying is not a result of malice or ill will but experimentation by adolescents who have unabridged access to the dangerous tool that social media is.
Addiction and Academic Impact
Even when students only use social media in the right manner without bullying, there is potential for addiction or overuse, which takes too much time away from classwork leading to poor performance (Marker, Gnambs & Appel, 2018). For example, Facebook, which is one of the most popular social media platforms, has potential for as many as five thousand “friends”. Even if only 5% of these friends post content on a given day, a popular user will have over 250 posts to peruse. The popular user might also be posting come content. Further, the hundreds of posts will attract reactions and comments, which the user may want to read and respond to. The constant use of such a network and a desire to interact with friends on social media constantly can be addictive. Even without an addiction, such usage of social media will take away time from studies and co-curriculum activities (Marker, Gnambs & Appel, 2018). High school students need to focus most of their efforts on their studies they are at the gateway to institutions of higher learning. The time lost to social media use can cost high school students the chance to pursue the careers of their choice due to poor grades.
Conclusion
The research and analysis above present examples of how social media adversely affects the lives of high school students. In all fairness, social media use may have some positive impact but as outlined above, the negative effect is capable of counterbalancing any positive effect. Due to social media, high school students find themselves having to live an artificial life to impress their online peers and get positive reactions on social networks. Online is also a major problem affective many high school students through the posting of negative content. Finally, social media takes away the time that students would otherwise spend studying or undertaking activities that would enable them to join universities of their choice. The overall effect of social media on high school students is this negative.
References
Bellmore, A., Huang, H. C., Bowman, C., White, G., & Cornell, D. (2017). The trouble with bullying in high school: issues and considerations in its conceptualization. Adolescent research review , 2 (1), 11-22.
Marker, C., Gnambs, T., & Appel, M. (2018). Active on Facebook and failing at school? Meta-analytic findings on the relationship between online social networking activities and academic achievement.
Salomon, I., & Brown, C. S. (2019). The selfie generation: examining the relationship between social media use and early adolescent body image. The Journal of Early Adolescence , 39 (4), 539-560.
