Online friendship that is often enhanced through internet interaction has developed both positive and negative impacts to the development of the adolescents. As concerns develop amongst the educators and other psychologists about the effect the online interaction has had on the developing or growing adolescents, we cannot shun away from exposing some of the effects of these developments especially the effect on the social developments of the adolescent children. The online interaction in essence has affected majority of the teenagers than it has influenced the parents and other people beyond the adolescent age bracket. The teenagers in their consumption of the online information engage with the music apps, playing of games and meeting new people among other effects of the online interactions.
The interaction does not however stop on the social development of the child but also influences the physical development of the child. In essence, early childhood development often involves around the physical development and manipulation that are mainly coordinated through the observational and social skills of the child hence the resultant effect is the manipulation of the child as a result of the interaction with these social platforms that presents to them during the development especially at the puberty stage. The children acquire hands on experiences that are very vital to their development as such the online friendship thus is responsible for their majority of their conversations as they keep focusing on the social lives that has always resulted into cause and effect type of relations that is online based. Majority of the people believe that there does exists any evidence supporting the fact that virtual manipulation often generates the intellectual skills and personality that will be useful in the day to day physical interaction with the physical world. They tend to be isolated from the real life and most of interactions are online based during their adolescent life. In this case the adolescent children tend to miss a lot from the real life that approaches them once they grow up as they have been so much involved in the online world that they never know how to approach issues in a mature way that in most cases come through face to face interactions.
The internet has been viewed as the easiest and quicker way to receive and send vast amount of information from multiple sources. Amongst the adolescent children, this has been narrowed down to the practice involving the practice that would limit children children’s access to the information by an act of limiting the amount of information received or sent by them through the act of sequencing the content of the information they are legally accessed to. This is due to the fact that there have been a reported instance of negative impacts of the information overload on the children that may result to information fatigue syndrome, a situation that provides a large volume of information to the students to a point that it gets confusing to the children of immature physical cognitive hence hurting the adolescent children’s development
As much as internet is a good source of learning for school going children as it provides good information and could be a tool for creative and intellectual work, the use of this wide information source can be abused thereby taking children away from doing other important things such as those relating to their social activities pertaining school work such as homework and other academics related assignments as they pool a wide source of friendship online that could be distractive in most cases. The pool of online friends could also be a distraction to children’s attention to details in their performance of various chores that are useful to their family and friends social and economic prosperity.
It is believed that internet causes adolescents to lose the skills and knowhow as well as their patience that enables them conduct social relations in the physical world. Through the internet and the interaction through it thereof, the negative effects of the television are amplified and the effects are felt on the children’s social skills. In addition, this online interaction therefore enhances the use and consumption of the contents that would otherwise be considered inappropriate to the adolescent kids. As the adolescent online friends interact, there are high chances that they discuss issues dealing on violence, hate speech, pornographic information or even issues on profanity that in essence would be dangerous for consumption among the adolescent kids. Therefore, their interaction thus provides a simple way of finding information and allows for unnecessary messages to find their roots into the adolescent kids.
The effects of these interactions with such information are detrimental. For instance pornography would be detrimental to adolescent children as it harms the children and destroys their idea of their childhood. Through their online interactions however, they are exposed to several pornographic information and pictures that when they consume affect their interactions, ability to think clearly and other issues that relates to their social lives.
In conclusion, it is evident that the adolescent children who are exposed to online friends not only reap the negative aspect of their interaction, they also benefit from these online interactions. However, the negative attributions to their online friendship is mostly negative than it is positive to their social life.
Works cited.
Greenfield, P. & Subrahmanyam, K. (2008). Online Communication and Adolescent
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Kramer, N.C. & Winter, S. (2008). Impression Management 2.0. The Relationship of Self‐ Esteem, Extraversion, Self‐Efficacy, and Self‐Presentation Within Social Networking Sites.
Regan, P, & Steeves, V. (2010). Kids R Us: Online Social Networking and the Potential for
Empowerment. Surveillance&Society.
Sheldon, P. (2008). The Relationship between Unwilingness‐to‐Communicate and Students’
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