3 Possible Effects of Social Media on Teens

Social media has been around for a while now, so today’s teens have grown up knowing about profiles, accounts, likes, and shares. Most parents Instagram their vacation adventures, share their children’s first day of school photos on Facebook, and rant about “those dang kids who keep ringing all the doorbells in the neighborhood” without leaving their favorite chair.

Instagram and other social media platforms have become such a common part of life, and because of their familiarity with them, many teens don’t realize the negative effects of social media or the dangers that lurk on the innocent-looking socials.

3 Possible Effects of Social Media on Teens

Most parents have discussed the effects of social media and the potential dangers of online life with their teens. They’ve talked with their teens about not sharing passwords and not meeting online friends without parental involvement. However, most parents don’t realize that, although physical dangers do exist when using social media, there are far more likely and equally detrimental aspects of the platforms.

1. Social media can rob them of their innocence
Parental controls can only do so much. If you allow your teen to use social media, you must realize that you are potentially exposing them to mature content. The adult content on social media isn’t confined to words and images, which are more easily filtered, but includes concepts, ideas, agendas, and cultural concepts that might not be appropriate for their age. Even subtle exposure changes the way they view the world, adulthood, relationships, and even themselves.

2. Social media can expose them to bullying
While traditional bullies still exist in the halls of the local schools, the internet has brought out a whole new method of bullying and a whole new group of bullies. Cyberbullying has brought out the confidence of would-be tyrants who might be too timid to hurl mean-spirited remarks to someone in person.

But because they can hide behind a screen and even remain anonymous in their reign of destruction, your child will be exposed to more attacks than they would if they were offline.

Sadly, social media not only increases the occurrences of bullying but also provides a more far-reaching platform. Because bullies can reach your child through phones, tablets, and computers, their presence extends into your home. And unfortunately, because of this all-access pass, even when your child is sitting next to you on the sofa for family movie night or when they are tucked safely in their bed, they might not be safe from emotional assault.

And to make matters worse, the digital world can turn once-comforting spaces into places where your child no longer feels truly safe, even after the bullying has stopped, due to the emotional baggage produced.

3. Social media can make them feel less than
All media is chock full of content that makes you feel less-than. Advertising, by its very model, aims to make you feel incomplete. After all, you wouldn’t buy that new perfume or vitamin if you felt fulfilled without it. But social media has a unique and even more detrimental ability.

Advertising and mass media are targeting a mass audience. But social media is specific. Anyone with internet access can create a campaign aimed at making themselves appear better than the other students in their class or the other dancers in their troupe. And those “other” people may include your child.

Even if a classmate or close associate isn’t targeting your child, the nature of social media encourages people to filter out their negative, but realistic, attributes. Scroll through your feed and count how many posts feature acned skin or bad hair days (unless they are trying to sell something).

Your child’s feed is the same. It features filtered photos, curated posts, well-thought-out hashtags, and strategic campaigns that make the poster appear healthier, thinner, and more popular.

When the inevitable desire to compare themselves to others arises, your child may feel inferior when they compare themselves to these images. Not because they are, but because they are comparing their real life, the ones with blemishes and blunders, against the false narratives that influencers (and even classmates) create for their online life.

Finding Their Identity in Christ

San Diego Christian Counseling can help quiet all that noise of self-doubt and loathing that has grown from the seeds of social media. It offers a space to breathe, to grieve what has already happened, and to process what has already been absorbed. A Christian counselor in San Diego, California can point your teen back to the one who loves them unconditionally and wholly and begin to mitigate the harm that has come from social media.

Christian Counseling for Teens in San Diego

While God says that we should be in the world, He also tells us that we shouldn’t be of it. Social media hands that world up to your teens on a silver platter with no warning label. As parents, your job is to shelter your children from the world, not forever, but until they are equipped to better stand in it.

If your teen would benefit from speaking with a Christian counselor in San Diego about their true worth when bombarded by social media posts, contact us today at San Diego Christian Counseling in California. Get them the help they need to see themselves as God sees them.