Kids These Days

A Story by Provemorumjay
THIS ISN'T A STORY BUT RATHER A SHORT TWO PARAGRAPHED NOTE/ARTICLE/ESSAYT about social media.

Before we are able to answer the fundamental question on how social media does indeed affect teenagers, it is pivotal for us to define for ourselves what is it that is presumably able to affect teenagers in the first place. Social media is a medium of communication wherein people are able to express or illustrate their thoughts without the limitations of immediate human interaction. With the utilization of the internet, an enourmous expanse wherein people are able to dispense to each other information quite efficiently and rapidly through an organized network of seemingly innumerable subsets of networks, it is a fact that anyone could immediately communicate with other people from different locations that are seperated from each other with distances so vast or perhaps seperated from each other a footstep away. It is absolutely a spectable to behold for in recent history have we only been able to atain such feats of wonder and amazement. Persons from earlier eras in our development as society would be awestruck to behold how we are able to instantaneously talk with other real, living, breathing human beings across the gargantuan confines of space without the telltale signs of lunacy and madness through the means of an intangible way of communication, due to it being virtual in nature,  which has never been witnessed before in human history. Within the internet, there are social networking sites which are partaked upon by people in order for them to have social interaction between other people at cyberspace. Examples of these social networking sites would be Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook to name a few. In each of them, people are able to express themselves, free from immediate human scrutinization, and to communicate various ideas, machinations of the mind, plights of triviality and unimportance, and more possibly with an innumerable amount of people that goes beyond that of immediate human interaction such as speaking audibly in a room yet being unable to be heard across other rooms. With these social networking sites, you are able to increase the size of that room wherein you are heard to a degree that is quite colossal for with the use of this kind of social media, you have transcended the physical and palpable confines of which people, as ordained by nature, communicate immediately which are yet are not limited to spoken vocabulary and body language as perceived by our senses and instead have used a human construct that exemplifies the unique human spirit of ingenuity and intelligence to be a vessel of what you intend other people to know or to understand that comes from you.
 
With a clear understanding of what social media is, we are now able to assess if the usage of social media has indeed an effect when it is utilized by adolescents. Teenagers commonly use social networking sites as a way for them to socialize with their select peer groups. They use the internet to express themselves to the outside world without fear or judgement from people around them. Free from prejudice and bigotry, they are free to be themselves within the confines of cyberspace. Gifted with such anonymity, they are often outspoken on what they have to say, being ignorant on what they spew out. This ignorance leads to inappropriateness and hurtful frivolous posts alot of times if teens do not think before they post unabashed. They think that due to the anonymous nature of the internet, they are free from the consequential instances that may happen due to them posting videos of cats dancing, bigoted spiteful youtube comments, thought-provoking Reddit posts of bewilderment, subjective reviews of PC games without objective regard to its potential and gameplay in websites that showcase gamer culture, tweets about random hate to random abstractions that the mind could conjure up in mere seconds such as the hate of one's afternoon out of a culmination of negative circumstances of that particular afternoon. They think they are safe from the repurcussions of their actions. Unfortunate for them, everything that they do wether it be in real life or in virtual mediums of anonymity such as the internet has an observable effect. Those videos of cats dancing could alleviate someone's mood who might have luckily seen the post during a time of profound sadness. Those spiteful comments filled with bigotry at Youtube could stir up intense feelings of dismay and wrath, due to them being controversial in nature, which could possibly lead to a feud filled with words of senseless profanity and hate. Basically, everything you do will indeed have an effect albeit it is simply that some of those effects may not be easily observable from the light of your perspective yet through the eyes of others, it could affect them from the lightest irk or possibly through grievances of immense distress. This phenomenon is especially seen not only to teenagers but as well as to the generation classified as the millenials or people who were born into modern technology. All who harness the technological splendor of social media, especially social networking sites within the internet, should be responsible with what they post and share with other people. They should be aware of the effect of whatever they do in cyberspace. They should be aware that the beings and entities that they communicate with online are in fact human beings that possess the same qualities that them themselves showcase what makes them human. They should not be apathetic and self-absorbed with what they say. All of us should be responsible and mature with what we do, especially in the internet where everyone is given the same burden of exhibiting restraint and self-discipline if all of us intend to create a harmonious environment ideal for what social media was created for in the first place.