Rosie Ortega Ms. Lehmann English 2-1B 28 February 2020 Social Media is Affecting Everybody! A wise person once said, “Use social media, don’t let social media use you.” Teens need to find a way to balance their use of social media between using it all the time or not at all. Teens should be responsible users of social media because social media impacts teens’ well-being, social connectedness, and academic achievement. In examining social media’s impact on well-being, it is clear the connection is complex. How we use social media impacts our well-being. Social media has both positive and negative impacts on teens’ emotional health. There are a range of challenges teens face in life, and social media allows them to seek out help they might not get otherwise. James et alwrite, “The ability to communicate anonymously can mitigatebarriers, such as shame, that interfere with support-seeking offline” (72).Being ableask for help anonymously has a positive impact on teens’ lives because it allows people to do so without feeling embarrassed or judged so that they can get the help they need. Having considered the positive impact on social media, users must be aware of the negative. Social media has been blamed for many negative impacts on people’s lives. James et al explain, “Several investigations document correlations between heavy media use and reduced well-being – related outcomes, such as diminished life satisfaction, internalizing negative experiences, and various dimensions of ill-being, such as depression, anxiety, attention problems, and stress” (72). When young adults use social media to compare themselves to others, negative outcomes will follow. When social media presents the good things in our lives as the only things, users can lose sight of the messiness of life, making them feel less satisfied with what they have. The impact that social media has on adolescents’ well-being depends upon how it is being used. Young adults use social media a lot, which affects their relationships. Social media has both positive and negative impacts on vulnerable teens. One survey showed that it’s a young adult’s personality that determines social media’s effect. The CSM survey said, “The 17 percent who scored in the low-SEWB group were the most impacted by social media interactions, suggesting that the child’s personality – not the platform – is the more important factor when determining the influence of social media” (K.Y. 18). We know that everyone has a different personality, we can’t always know how social media affects everyone; it depends on their perception of life. When teens use social media instead of face-to-face interactions,they losecommunication skills.Teens prefer to be on their phones instead of interacting with friends even when near each other. The survey says, “Only 32 percent say their favorite way to communicate with friends is in person (Dropping from 49 percent in 2012) and teens are more likely to say they are distracted by social media when they are with people (54 percent, up from 44)” (K.Y. 18). Although this complicates teens’ relationships, they can benefit from it by expressing themselves in their own way. By showing teens how to communicate face-to-face, social media’s negative impact can belessened. Some argue that the dangers of social media have been overexaggerated. Despite the appeal of this argument, the negative effects of social media cannot be ignored entirely. Using social media too much has been connected to a lack of emotional and physical well-being as well as weaker social connectedness. Success in school has also been impacted by screen time. “Academic performance is directly related to sleep time and inversely related to overall sedentary SMU [screen media use]among the students who participated in this study” (Peíro- Velert et al 5). The study found that the more time students spent on their screens, the less time they had to sleep,which resulted in lower academic achievement. It’s obvious that social media’s impact is complicated, and people should be mindful of how they use it. By using social media responsibly, teens can minimize its impact on their health, face-to-face connections with others, and success in school. Being aware of how they use social media can help minimize impacts on teens. There are many teens who prefer to use social media rather than communicating face-to-face.This can be acted upon by limiting their social media usage. The amount of time spent on social media has an indirect impact on academic achievement, whichcan becontrolled by spending less time on social media.If teens limit their usage,they will be using social media rather than letting social media use them.Page Break Works Cited James, Carrie, Katie Davis, Linda Charmaraman, Sara Konrath, Petr Slovak, Emily Weinstein, and Lana Yarosh. “Digital Life and Youth Well-being, Social Connectedness, Empathy, and Narcissism.” Pediatrics, vol. 140, no. S2, November 2017, pp. 71-75. Academic Search Premier, doi: 10.1542/peds.2016-1758F. Accessed 21 January 2020. K.Y “Social Media and Teens.” School Library Journal, vol. 64, no. 10, pp. 18-18, Academic Search Premier.Accessed 21 January 2020. Perío- Velert, Carmen, Alexandra Valencia- Peris, Luis M. González, Xavier García- Massó, Pilar Serra-Año, José Devís- Devís. “Screen Media Usage, Sleep Time and Academic Performance in Adolescents: Clustering a Self- Organizing Maps Analysis.” Plos One, vol.9, Issue 6, June 2014, pp. 1-9. Academic Search Primer, doi:10. 1371/journal.pone.0099478. Accessed 10 February 2020.
Research Paper Reflection Please answer all questions in complete, grammatically correct sentences. 1. Explain the process you went through to write this paper. Please be specific. At first we had to come up with some brainstorms to figure out what we wanted to research about. As a class, we read multiple articles and took Cornell Notes to put in our research paper. Then we cited everything on a Works Cited page and then made an Annotated Bibliography. 2. What qualifies this paper as an argumentative essay? What are the requirements for this genre and how did you meet them? It shows our others opinions and effect on using social media supported by doing surveys. I had to make sure I cited every quote and give credit to the author. This paper had a main claim, evidence, and a rebuttal. 3. Explain one thing you learned about reading research or taking notes on research that you can apply to your next research paper. I know how to correctly make Cornell Notes and I based off of those notes you can make your entire research paper. This will definitely help me in my next year's class because making these notes makes it one hundred times easier.