Socially Awkward?: Does Social Media harm our children or help poor communicators get heard?

With all the current media surrounding the terrible effects Social Media is having on young peoples mental health, the above is a pretty bold statement so I need to explain myself!

The statement ‘social media is bad for young peoples mental health’ is a very sweeping, far reaching and generalised view of a set of platforms that are designed to allow people to interact with others.

Based on the philosophy that NOTHING is all bad, I encourage you to look at the other side of the coin. There are a huge number of people who would have few, or no friends if it weren’t for Facebook etc… I’m thinking specifically of people who are extremely shy or suffering with their mental health and also people with neurodiverse brains who struggle to make friends.

Communicating via a device makes the whole social ‘thing’ doable where it otherwise wouldn’t be. I also know of a lot older people who have taken to social media in order to keep up with far flung families.

Those who criticise the effects of social media may remember the days when communication was only possible face to face, or by telephone, if you had one. Growing up, we didn’t have one so if I wanted to make arrangements with friends I had to do it in person when I saw them or walk a mile to the phone box in order to ring the ones who did have a phone!

In some ways this was a good system, we were all a lot more reliable when it came to arrangements back then as we had no means to let someone know at the last minute that we couldn’t make it. Nowadays we walk around with a phone in our pocket, well we call it a phone, it’s actually a pocket computer which gives us access to the entire world, not just our friends.

The way we communicate and interact with the world has changed so dramatically in such a short period of time that, as human beings, we haven’t had the time or the ability to adjust quickly enough.

Certainly, our guiding generation (parents) predominantly haven’t been able to keep up with the advance of technology in the same way their children have. The set of parenting skills we need have changed dramatically, but, as a general rule, we, as parents, haven’t adapted to the way the modern world works for our offspring.

Herein lies part of the challenge when it comes to social media…

Our children live in a wonderful world that they can access, at any time, via their pocket computer! They can access the answer to any question within seconds without having to wait for the library to open the next day in order to be able to trawl through dozens of books to find the answer.

What an incredible gift to grow up with! And how wonderful is it to be able to keep friendships alive that 30 years ago would have died as people moved apart?

And what about people with disabilities? Having various social platforms with which to connect to similar people gives them a far wider reach in the world that they wouldn’t otherwise have.

People with impaired hearing can use Facebook live to be able to communicate via sign language with so many others, a tool that makes their world a lot less lonely.

Social media allows like minded people to come together as a group for the betterment of everyone. Brain storming groups can discuss issues on a global level and share information and images that can be used to better understand the challenges in far off places.

So much of this is done via social media, it would be an enormous step backwards if these platforms were forced to close down.

And, as always, the flip side is that social media will be abused by the few and make it a less safe place for our young people.

The other reality that we compare ourselves more readily to others and find ourselves lacking is another downside, but, maybe we all need to be more accountable for what we believe and take a slightly more realistic view of what we’re seeing?

Nobody’s life is THAT perfect, we all know that in our heart of hearts so let’s teach our younger generations accordingly. Back to the appropriate parenting again, we need to try and keep up with this fast paced and rapidly changing world so that we parent our children in keeping with modern trends.