Abstract
Thesis: The high engagement with the social media world has weakened the family bonds and worsened the generation gap and communication difficulties between parents that did not grow up with these social media and their children. It also created future young adults that lack foundations of personal social interaction, fundamental for their role in society.
In this essay, it is presented a critical analysis of what the impact of the social media available nowadays is in the family environment and mechanism, bringing to the light the fact that these are times when everyone is highly engaged in these types of cyber interaction, particularly the younger generations (talking specifically of kids and teenagers).
Within the family environment, it has been observed a weakening of the family bonds and close interaction because of the large amount of time spent online or with cell phone activity. This not only emphasizes the generation gap even more and creates further communication difficulties between parents that did not grow up with these social media and their children (and, because of it, do not understand fully the dynamics of it in their children’s lives, or are able to guide them properly), but also creates lack of personal social interaction learned skills in the young generations (which should come from the family interaction), making them too dependent on the social media to interact socially with their peers and inapt to properly engage with society and have their own role in it, in the future.
Keywords: social media, generation, family, impact, teenagers, social skills, interaction, gap, engage, conversation, internet, cell phone, time, relationship, intimacy.
Nowadays, the generation of the young ones is seen in a negative way, because of their high engagement with social media. Although these are truly times when social media play a very important role in professional and even educational aspects of life, they are also taking their toll on family life, not only because people within the family may spend too little with their loved ones because of the social media engagement, but also because there is also lack of acceptance and knowledge from the parents to be able to participate in their children’s activities online, and lack of foundations on social interaction to these children.
Acceptance
Within the family, it is normal that all parents worry about their kids’ activities and whether they’re being able to be good parents. Given these fears, for parents easily feel alone and impotent facing potential trouble for their kids. Social media can truly help parents in this important area, by providing communication with people that can help.
There are websites now (e.g. Café Mom), which allow stories’ sharing by the parents with others and, through the process, get feedback from parents who have experienced similar situations. Not only they can learn how to be able to understand their children, but also create ideas on how to behave, so that some situation can be handled better, and feel supported and more serene about it, not so lost and without any guidance.
Overload of Social Media Engagement on both sides
Although social media is useful for the teenagers in creating bridges of communication between individuals more easily, it does not replace the personal communication in real-life conversation situations with a friend; but this high-paced rhythm of constant communication online attracts many teenagers, as well as the parents’ concerns. This portrays a true generation gap: kids will happily communicate the fittest way they understand as such, and their parents are always prone to think an in-person communication would be better, together with the inability to be able to reach out to their children about it.
Ironically, parents are often as engaged with the social media as their children. For example, in a soccer game of their kids, it is likely to see a big part of the parents constantly checking the cell phones. Thus, parents are as addicted as kids are and this reflects some inability of their own of engaging proper social and personal interaction, searching shelter on these social media.
Privacy & Trust Issues
The social media, such as Facebook, began being a medium of communication for college students, but nowadays it is universal and millions of people use it, which includes parents and their children.
The daily life events and posts are registered on the pages frequent during the day and done in a very candid way by the teenagers, especially; they often forget that their parents can log on and check their Facebook page and posts. This brings along the fact that, since many of the teens don’t tell everything they do, or that goes on in their lives to their parents, these, nowadays, often feel tempted to check on a child’s Facebook page.
But, even though it may be a good way to be aware of their children’s life, doing so also brings up the basic issue of trust, which is very important and key-aspect to have within the family. Before the social media, there were no ways to “meddle” in the life of someone; or, in this case, of the kids’ and the teenagers’ life outside the family environment. In some sense, a parent is somewhat saying that they do not have trust in their children; and it is easily perceived by these, not just as lack of trust, but also as disrespect for their privacy.
This, of course, is mining the relationships within the family as well.
Generation Gap & Future Parents
One thing that is certain is that this generation of parents that have teenagers as their children didn’t actually grow up with the social media. The confluence between technology and the free time nowadays, paired with the ability to be in touch with the peers is what makes teenagers to become so engaged with social media. Because their parents, on the contrary, didn’t grow up with these means, it becomes difficult for them to fully understand what is the actual impact in their children’s life and it kind of separates them; as some sort of communication impediment, like when people don’t talk the same language.
When ten years have passes, there will be a generation of people who grew up with social media and the Internet as parents, having teenagers of their own. Maybe these will present themselves as far more capable of understanding social media’s impact on the world and, extending this to the personal and family life, be aware of its mechanism and effects, so that proper use may actually be taught.
Family Time
Many names, like Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter are the most common names to hear about nowadays, regarding all ages, cultures and races; people spend a large portion of their time dedicated with interaction on the social media that are available on the Internet.
Considering a recent Nielsen poll from the month of August, internet users are sending 17% of their time online on social media, which is almost triple of the number recorded the past year. Another study, the Pew Internet Project, has reported that 93% of the American children that range between 12 and 17 years of age are internet users, and 55% of these have social media profiles registered. This is much time to spend on these social media, which means that family social interaction is, consequently, diminished.
In fact, according to experts, such as Dr. Laura Schlessinger, social media and cyber technologies also have a negative effect on the family’s own structure, in which it is being used to replace the interactions and intimacy between the family members. Amon these members, young teens are the ones that are most affected by this. By being so engaged with social media activities, teenagers isolate themselves from the family and, consequently, fail to have the proper foundations for social skills.
There has been a replacement of family conversations at the table for texting, and instead of quality family time, in joint activities, there are countless hours spent on social media on the internet. As a result, families don’t enjoy or develop their bonds, because there is an evident lack of intimate interaction.
Thus, some ideas and guidelines, quite simple ones, could make the family to enjoy the social media, without intimate family time lost. Truly, parents should keep the social media subject in perspective. Some rules, like ensuring that the sites of social media visited are age appropriate; knowing what are the sites the kids use for interaction and the registry requirements; self-education of the parents, so that they know the basics about what sites make available to the children, and setting the example, so that also the parents set aside their electronics and have time for family interaction would encourage the young ones to engage in other things and get involved with family and actual personal interaction.
Social Skills
As referred before, the social media have been put in question on what regards the learning of proper social skills. Would the engagement in forms of social media, as a routine, benefit both children and adolescents, enhance the ability to communicate, the social connection, or their technical skills?
Social media do, absolutely, offer constant opportunities for connection with friends, the classmates, and even people who share common interests. Over the last 5 years, the preadolescents’ and adolescents’ number, using these means, has had a dramatic increase. Apart from the fact that 22% of teenagers check their favorite site for social media more than 10 times a day, three quarters of the teenagers also have cell phones; from these, 25% use the cell phones for social media, 54% for texting purposes, and 24% for instant messages. This way, one can conclude that a large part of the teenagers’ social and also emotional development goes on while they are either on the Internet, or on their cell phones.
Putting these facts together with the one that regards their self-regulation limited capacity and high peer pressure susceptibility, children and adolescents are, truly, exposed to various kinds of risk along with their social media activity, such as cyber bullying, or even sexual experimentation, Internet real addiction and sleep deprivation, as a consequence of it. These are, obviously, not the proper basic foundations for social skills to develop and make the young ones ready to face the “outside world”; not even inside their homes.
Because it would be impossible to simply remove these social media from everyday life, it is important that parents, today, use technology well, and feel comfortable and capable to use the trendiest programs and online sites, so that their children (and adolescents) can have a digital savvy education of how to engage socialization, without feeling dependent from them. The parents should develop such technical abilities and make sure they find time, so that they keep pace with the ever-changing landscape of Internet to which the children are exposed.
Conclusion
In conclusion, nowadays the youngest generations, especially teenagers, are highly engaged with social media and have an almost constant use of it throughout the day. By using them as means for interaction with other people, mostly their peers, and for such a long period of time during their day, the time spent with the family is neglected and the close bonds between parents and their children are diminished, or lost.
Moreover, when facing the fact that this generation of parents, who have kids and teenagers, did not grow up surrounded by these social media, there is a deeper generation gap between them, which brings further difficulties to the understanding of how these social media work in depth, how the online and offline lives of their children are linked together, and how to properly educate their children about and to have a savvy and safe use of them, together with the ability to monitor it without invading the kids’ and teenagers’ privacy.
On another point of view, the fact that close family relationships are weakened by these mentioned situations creates teenagers that do not possess strong foundations on social interaction, which should begin indoors, with the family. The isolation of the family members, buried in the social media world creates, then, future generations that feel unprepared and very vulnerable to the outside world, without the ability to properly fit into society, just as they seem not to in their own family.
References
Macleihob (n.d). Social Media and its Impact on Families. Retrieved from http://macleighob.wordpress.com/social-media-and-its-impact-on-families/
Moore, John (2009). Social Networking Sites and the Effects on Family Interaction. Retrieved from http://www.examiner.com/article/social-networking-sites-and-the-effects-on-family-interaction
O’Keeffe, Gwen Schurgin, Clarke-Pearson, Kathleen (2011). The Impact of Social Media on Children, Adolescents and Families. Retrieved from http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/127/4/800.full
Social Web Q and A (2012). The Effects of Social Media on Families. Retrieved from http://socialwebqanda.com/2012/05/the-effects-of-social-media-on-families/
