Impact of social media on children

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OPINION

By Rev. Fr. Lazar Arasu SDB

In the past weeks, several developed countries have been debating banning smartphones and social media for children and teenagers. Several voices were raised: “Social media is a tool; children need wisdom to use it, not freedom to be used by it.”

“Children don’t need more screens — they need more guidance.”

“Technology moves fast; childhood should not be rushed.”

Many mentors and educators insisted: “Walk with children online, not just behind them.”

“The strongest parental control is a listening ear.”

“Teach children when to log in and when to log out.” And all of them called for more family time, parental love and care. Surely, before giving them a phone, we need to give them values — temperance, resilience, and lessons on setting priorities.

Last year, in my neighbourhood, I witnessed three cases of suicide among school-going teenagers. Two of them were related to the use of smartphones. A teenager took poison because the mother restricted the use of the telephone, and another who demanded to have a phone but failed to get one.

Social media has become part of children and teenagers’ lives.

With the cheap Asian-made devices and rather easily available internet, minors, those below 18, are hooked to smartphones, day in and day out. There was a thought-provoking cartoon. A mother found her little son scrolling through his phone early in the morning and asked him with little surprise and annoyance, “Are you still on your phone?” And the boy replied, “Mum, I could not get to sleep…”

And the mother replied, “It is already 7.00am.” Meaning, he has been scrolling his phone the whole night. It is a joke explaining a precarious situation that children are now going through.

Surely, social media is a part of children’s world today. Like wildfire, it can warm or burn — all depends on how it is used, allowed and guided. We cannot deny certain positive aspects, such as children can get in touch with friends and family, and can make learning easy and interesting. They can easily access lessons, art, music, stories and even inspiration. Early in life, they are able to discover their talents and learn to express themselves, and social media can even create a sense of belonging to a larger world.

Anxiety, fear, stress, worry, peer pressure, distraction and indecisiveness are emotions and sensations that all human beings go through throughout their day and throughout their life. Young children, too, go through them. But unlike adults, young people are not able to handle them and overcome them with the ease that adults can. Constantly being hooked into social media causes everyone these feelings and sensations, which in turn cause mood changes and mood swings.

Given their nature of growing up and lack of maturity, social media platforms can easily place heavy emotional stress on children and adolescents. As they have not yet developed inner tools to handle enormous pressure, loads of information and varied thoughts being pumped into their tender brains and senses, it certainly causes a huge emotional stress.

The risks brought by the use of social media and use of smartphones in general are more than the apparent benefits. Children are exposed to unlimited characters, personalities and people of different traits to which they compare themselves. Consciously and unconsciously, this creates, in their young minds, a comparison which in turn creates anxiety and low self-esteem. They begin to look at their lives as imperfect and not good enough. Children build within themselves an imaginary competition which they feel they need to fight. The fear of missing out makes them feel excluded or left behind. This is the worst feeling a child can feel. When they are pushed to a self-created loneliness, they begin to have suicidal thoughts.

Social media exposes children to cyberbullying with hurtful comments, thus creating fear or even trauma. It is not uncommon to see a child who is overusing social media and constantly hooked to websites with moods of anger, annoyance, irritations and impatience. Thus, they ruin their personal morals and character building.

More than all these, constant use of social media affects their sleep, and rest from brain-activity affects their mental and physical health. This can lead to addiction and distraction from other important duties and activities such as study, hobbies, prayer and relationships. The unsafe contents and contacts often expose them to adult contents of a sexual nature, relationships with people beyond their age and interests.

Researchers on children and the digital world have found that young people are unable to distinguish the real world from real people from the unreal world that exists in the digital realm. Due to their inability to make the right and informed judgment, they are deceived and misled to place both worlds on par with each other. This creates serious problems in their judgment, and they are pushed to live in an unreal world.

From another angle, the digital world or the world of social media becomes a continuation of the world they live in at school and among their peers. Or they continue to view the real world in the light of the unreal social media world. This misguided judgment confuses their mind and creates in them undue or make them live in a world of fantasy or world of fear. This affects their normal life and growth. 

Thus, the digital world of today has pushed children to new problems and new challenges. The parents, educators and mentors, too, need informed counselling strategies to meet their needs. This involves sufficient knowledge of the technology, awareness of various digital avenues visited by our teens, the right solution to guide them and sufficient skills in handling their dependents if they are already becoming victims of digital addiction. For grown-ups, it is a real challenge to be one step ahead of our teens in digital knowledge. But efforts have to be made. It is through love and care that we teach them to be strong: “A grounded child is harder to shake by the noise of the world.”

The writer is the headmaster of Don Bosco SS, Atede-Gulu