The title of the “text” shown above is what I have chosen to analyze. The Effects of Social Media on Kids concerns the thesis that social media has offered to us nothing but better and faster way of communication, especially to kids/school aged children. The topic comes from my readings of different reputable online resources about social networking sites. The context in which it is usually experienced is over the internet. I chose to study the text because it has always been timely these days. The rhetorical concept/philosophy that I will be utilizing in my study of the text is the effectiveness of social media in the everyday lives of children. The rhetorical scholars associated with this theory include founders of some of the most popular social media (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, etc.). They apply the concepts to the study communication/rhetoric such that they understand the power of sending a message across using as few as 150 words (e.g., Twitter). I chose these concepts/theories in my analysis because they shed light to the very intent of my rhetorical analysis of social media. My different examples of observations that could be “main points” in my study of the chosen text are the positive and negative effects of social media on kids. For example, to analyze why social media has offered to us nothing but better and faster way of communication, I will describe, interpret, and evaluate different social media, where the burden of proof rests on me as critic.
- Brief History of Social Media
- Lead-In: A Quote from a Social Media Expert (“The impact that technology has on your children depends not on the technology itself, but rather on how you educate them about it and the experiences they have with it.” – Dr. Jim Taylor, HuffingtonPost.com)
- Human Necessity as the Mother of Social Media Evolution
- Examples of Social Media (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
- Social Media is the Product of Human Ingenuity
- Thesis: Social Media Has Offered to Us Nothing but Better and Faster Ways of Communication
- Social Media and Its Effects
- The Philosophy Behind the Proliferation of Social Media
- Social Media and Its Positive Effects on Kids
- Social Media and Its Negative Effects on Kids
- Why Social Media Has Offered to Us Nothing but Better and Faster Way of Communication
- Reasons: Some of the Positive Effects of Social Media
- Reason #1: Through Social Media, Better Communication is Promoted
- Reason #2: By Means of Social Media, Faster Communication is Made Possible
- Reason #3: Other Endless Possibilities, such as the following:
c.1. Improve Learning Outcome
c.2. Enhance Knowledge Sharing
- Counter-Arguments: Some of the Negative Effects of Social Media
- Kids’ Online Privacy is at Stake
- Negative Change the Social Dynamics of Communication
- The Pros Outweigh the Cons of Social Media
- Summary and Conclusion: Social Media are Considered as One of the Most Significant of Human Ingenuity
I. Brief History of Social Media
Through social media, group of individuals interact freely by sharing and discussing a variety of topics just about anything. For kids, this is what Dr. Jim Taylor has to say: “The impact that technology has on your children depends not on the technology itself, but rather on how you educate them about it and the experiences they have with it.” But before delving further into the ado’s of social media, I want to share first social media’s brief historical background .
Social media, by the way, are domain sites where people can interact freely, using a mix of online multimedia, such as audios, videos, texts, photos, and so on. With social networking site, as they are oftentimes used to be called, allow individuals to make and exchange digital or electronic contents as they engage conversations. Many of these media are in the forms of social networks, message boards, podcast portals, social bookmarking, microblogs and blogs, collective intelligence, news and tagging, message boards and forums, scrapbooking and digital storytelling, audio and video sharing, virtual worlds, name it.
In 1969, CompuServe was the archetypal public yet commercial internet service provider in America. It used dial-up technology until the 1990’s. Nearly two years later (1971) was the use of the electronic mail (email). In 1978, the initial virtual community came into being when Chicago hobbyist created the electronic bulletin board system. They used it to make announcements of meetings and to share posts. A year after, University of North Carolina and Duke University used an electronic bulletin board known as the Usenet. In 1984, the Prodigy Internet Service Provider (ISP), which is now merged with AT&T, was next to CompuServe in its number of subscribers. Another ISP opened in 1985, more popularly known as AOL or The American Online.
Two decades before the dawn of the Internet Age, Tim Berners-Lee started working on what is to be known as the World Wide Web at the Conseil Europeen pour la Recherche Nucleaire (European Council for Nuclear Research) in Switzerland. In 1993, CERN’s WWW was provided to the world. That same year, the first browser or webpage, was born, together with the emergence of more than a hundred of internet servers. In 1994, Yahoo became a leading search engine and other ISPs came into existence, which brought up a global information superhighway.
With the emergence of more than one million websites in 1997, came a course management system, blogging, instant messaging, and so on. A year after Yahoo’s founding, Google was another major search and indexing engine that was founded. In the UK, in 1999, Friends Reunited, which locates past classmates, became a popular social networking site. By 2000, more than 70 million computers were interconnected online. From 2001 to 2013, came Wikipedia, Friendster, MySpace, LinkedIn, iTuneds, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, as well as, billions of peoples as netizens.
The creation of the world wide web has made it possible to make communication, as an apparently human necessity, the mother of social media evolution. As mentioned above, other examples of social media continue to proliferate the world over. Indeed, social media has been and will always be the product of human ingenuity. Thus, it can be argued that social media has offered to us nothing but better and faster ways of communication.
II. Social Media and Its Effects
A. The Philosophy behind the Proliferation of Social Media
Part of human nature is the need to communicate, whenever possible, better and faster. As social media keep rising in demand, individuals and groups continue to embrace them. Because of the user-friendliness of social media, people who seek to belong in a group do so. For some netizens who target a broad range of audience, for various purposes, they paid attention to what they are sharing. Most often than not, people go to media channels that they have proven or referred to as trustworthy. Even when they did not intend to attract other audiences, they have done so and continue to do so. As a result, they have created for themselves groups, circles, and fan pages.
Social Media and Kids
The social media have both positive and negative impact to communication among individuals or society (Lamy, Mangenot and Zourou; Monaco; Thorne). It has affected almost all aspects of life, especially, of kids and even school learners. While in front of their computers, there are kids who interact with other netizens (e.g., classmates, parents) using their smartphones and a language known to them. As a result, they learn new things (e.g., new words that increase their vocabularies). However, there may be many times when they just express themselves the way they want to so long they are understood. Still, there are situations when they have to use some words they are not really familiar with. Hence, such an example using online social networking sites could either spell, directly or indirectly, good or bad influence on kids and their learning.
B. Social Media and Its Positive Effects on Kids
According to Monaco, social media have positive impact on communication (15). In the next few years, because there will be more people speaking English in countries that are non-speakers, kids will be affected with these constant changes and social media things. Today, the social media such as Facebook and other blogs serve as a place where new and newer contents are posted. Social technology has made it easier for kids to learn new contents or forms of either communication that improve their communicative knowledge and technological skills. Other than social media having a positive impact on communication, it also somehow enhanced cultural exchange among children or school aged children (Lamy, Mangenot and Zourou 92).
Young people used to be of the same age use social media to share information (Kevelson). When they view advertisements written in impressive forms, they know how eye-catching and humorous some are because contents (e.g., texts/words) are used in new ways, which makes “language to grow” (Thorne). As more and more people from different geographical locations keep on using social media (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.), there is always a possibility that the original language and its meaning may evolve for a specific group and/or setting – for good. The change in the way, for instance, language is used will thus change over time to serve the interests even of children who use it for their own advantages.
C. Social Media and Its Negative Effects on Kids
Although even kids have adapted to social media incredibly well, there appear issues concerning the quality of contents (e.g., language). According to Leslie Savan, social media such as Facebook affect the way people, including children, from different geographic regions communicate to each other (54). Even though social media provide a platform where people from different locations and language adopt a convenient means of communication, its informal use could encourage the careless use of a word different from context or its original usage. For example, advertisers in the social media may use languages that are not grammatically correct just to make them appeal to a specific group of readers (Kevelson 87). Consequently, kids will simply pick words they find interesting in advertisements and use them in their daily life without taking into account relevant matters related to correct spelling, usage, etc, as well as, those that require parental consent or guidance.
In line with the latter paragraph, Twitter, which is a popular social network, enables its users to send text messages containing a maximum of 140 characters. This restriction, however, produces undue changes on the social dynamics of children’s communicative abilities, as it limits the kids to pass information in not more than 140 characters as different to normal conversation, not to mention the abbreviation and use of symbols that do not show the correct spelling of a word. The restriction drives the user to abbreviate or misspell words to deliver the message. More than 500 million users around the world, which include children of various ages, are thus developing the habit of abbreviating and misspelling word in their life. These negative impacts of social media will only increase grammatical mistakes among kids because they spend most of their time communicating using abbreviations and misspellings (Monaco 15). However, there is no definite solution to this problem because social media are convenient and easy ways of informally informing friends or the public about one’s opinion, feelings, and so on.
As gleaned above regarding the positive and negative impacts of social media on kids, nonetheless, the benefits derived from them are much greater than their disadvantages. Because social media are faster and more convenient ways of communicating and interacting among children across the world, there is a much greater likelihood that they learn more from their peers through productive collaboration and positive engagement. Since geographical boundaries are never an issue in social media, kids may simply use “languages they may end up applying” in their everyday lives (Savan). Even when interaction in “social media are not always formal,” where the use of some abbreviation are without sense to some, if not most people, and the sentence constructions are ridden with grammatical errors (Monaco), the internet remains the largest repository of information, which somehow mitigates the negative effects of social media in terms of language usage.
D. Why Social Media Has Offered to Us Nothing but Better and Faster Way of Communication
Social media has offered to us nothing but better and faster ways of communication because of the timely and convenient mode of viewing, sharing, collecting, storing, and transmitting data for personal/private purposes. Kids and other internet simply enter the social media that they want to visit. All that they have to keep in mind is some basic understanding and application of protecting personal or group data/information. This is because there is what we call identity theft when kids simply give up freely their personal information over the internet. Thus, even when social media provide better and faster ways of communication, privacy online should never be sacrificed at the expense of enjoying one’s moment over the net.
i. Reasons: Some of the Positive Effects of Social Media
a. Reason #1: Through Social Media, Better Communication is Promoted
With social media, the gargantuan information seem not enough: from a megabyte of video uploads to tweets. When millions and billions of people across the world share information, some of the recipients are kids. They are amazed at the constant influx of information that they want to be involved. At a mouse click or press on a keypad, they can type their own messages, download photos and videos, and a lot more. When they want to learn something about their favorite celebrities, all they need is to search using Google, Youtube, or like or ask friend request. Having said so, what is really important that social media have brought about to kids is on learning, communicating with parents, and collaborating with their peers. By means of social media, they learn the importance of netiquettes, too. These are nothing but the positive effects of social media when it comes to better communication.
b. Reason #2: By Means of Social Media, Faster Communication is Made Possible
Similar to the reason above, social media made it possible to have much faster communication, far from the imagination of previous generations. At the push of a key, a kid can forward a message to his/her parents, nanny, or children of his/her own age. When a kid has got a new photo to share, he/she simply click the icon of a social media site. Second later, it is posted in his/her account. Those in the other end can interact with him/her immediately. Where in past decades it would take days, weeks, or months to receive a letter from a loved one, these days, with social media technologies, those are nothing but things of the past.
c. Reason #3: Other Endless Possibilities, such as improved learning outcome and enhanced knowledge sharing
Social media are not simply use to send, upload, download, share, etc. info in superficial ways. When kids use their learning apps, whatever their thoughts are about a particular subject matter in school, for instance, can be share with others within their circle, group, or class. Because of these social technologies, children have come to realize that they learn more and productively. Enhanced learning outcomes through enhanced knowledge sharing has been the key element why kids want to use their electronic devices. Educational learning materials and resources are more colorful, visually stimulating, and engaging.
ii. Counter-Arguments: Some of the Negative Effects of Social Media
a. Kids’ Online Privacy is at Stake
Other than the disadvantages (e.g., poor online contents, limits in the number of words use, etc.) of social media mentioned above, online privacy seem to top it most. Social media has virtually unleash the contents and power of the Pandora’s box. Kids can easily become prey to unscrupulous individuals and groups who upload and share information that are for adults only. There are also sites who stealthily monitor keyboard presses for accounts and passwords. If adults are vulnerable to online privacy, so much are kids.
A reason for concern is that many third-party websites, though they ask permission from internet users to store their own data (i.e., cookies or short line of text) on a person’s hard drive, nothing is far from the truth that they personal information could possibly be used for other and uncalled for purposes. Even when such site administrators do ask for permission in exchange for a promise of a more convenient way of using third-party services, such that there is no need to repeatedly enter your and password to any of your previously visited websites, not all site owners may, at all times, be truthful to their promises. This is not to mention that not all website owners ask for permission to enter their data on users’ hard drive. Consequently, depending on how a kid or peer or parent or teacher sets his/her kid’s privacy setting, personal data/information may still leak slowly and invisibly (Morozov). Any individuals who utilize online contents can be potential targets of unscrupulous online users, internet service providers, and other third party websites (e.g., online shops) to illegally monitor users’ browsing experiences and private data (e.g., credit card details).
b. Negative Change the Social Dynamics of Communication
Other than kids’ online privacy being negatively affected, social media has also brought about changes in the social dynamics of communication – for bad. Some children became addicted in the use of computers or smartphones. They tend to be more satisfied communicating with peers they are concerned and involved with via the internet rather than focusing on their relationships with parents, neighbors, etc. Sometimes, they are more interactive and engaging with online friends than those of their siblings because they tend to be happier when they communicate with their peers. As a result, negative changes in the social or face-to-face dynamics of communication is undermined.
iii. The Pros Outweigh the Cons of Social Media
Many of the benefits that social media has brought to us, especially to children, were more than all the disadvantages that they have. Social media have offered kids the communicative knowledge and skills through online learning, social texting, cooperation, collaboration, and so on. As technologies become more advance, so do newer versions or forms of social media. If not for social media, there should have not be a global village of learners, be they children or adults, which remains unparalleled in human history. Hence, social media continue to improve as more people of all ages patronize online contents.
IV. Summary and Conclusion: Social Media are Considered as One of the Most Significant of Human Ingenuity
Despite of anything contrary to the negative effects of social media, social media remain part of kids’ everyday lives. However, adults, parents, or guardians ought to guide their children what contents to view or not given their delicate moral, social, spiritual, physical, etc. development. Because the world we live becomes smaller each day, it is just fitting that, with enhanced technologies and newer forms of social media, children should be the first to come in mind when it comes to online privacy, safety, security, and protection . Thus, whether social media have positive or negative impact on kids, adults should make it a point that, as members of a constantly evolving global community, whatever is shared or to be shared should be something worthwhile. This should be the rule rather than the exception.
Works Cited
Bennett, Shea. A Brief History Of Social Media (1969-2012) . 4 July 2013. Web. 27 November 2013.
Kevelson, Roberta. The Inverted Pyramid: An Introduction to a Semiotics of Media Language. Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2007. Print.
Lamy, Marie-Noëlle, François Mangenot and Katerina Zourou. Key issues and recommendations for the development of language resources for language learning by the use of social media. n.d. Web. 13 May 2013. <http://www.elearningeuropa.info/en/debates/language-learning-social-media-and-development-language-resources>.
Monaco, James. How to Read a Film: The World of Movies, Media, and Multimedia : Language, History and Theory. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Print.
Morozov, Evgeny. The Dangers of Sharing. 27 Janury 2012. The New York Times. Web. 26 November 2013. <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/books/review/i-know-who-you-are-and-i-saw-what-you-did-social-networks-and-the-death-of-privacy-by-lori-andrews-book-review.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&>.
Savan, Leslie. Slam Dunks and No-Brainers: Language in Your Life, the Media, Business, Politics, And, Like, Whatever. New York: Knopf, 2005. Print.
Thorne, Steven. "Community', semiotic flows, and mediated contribution to activity." Language Teaching 42.1 (2009): 81–94. Web.
