Ok yeah, the whole issue of cyberbullying goes without saying, and cybersafety doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of the uncertainties technologies such as the internet. But social networking on a whole could affect the self esteem of our future generation by just being there. We get the hateful messages, and the exclusions and so on, but I'm talking about just your daily facebook checks. Theres something psychological to do with the presence of social networking. 1. 'Likes' and reputation: I actually wrote this in a facebook status the other day. Your reputation on these stupid sites is based on how many 'likes' you get on a status, or a photo, and the amount of likes you get on any particular photo depends on how much of your boobs are showing. Such is the degradation of today's cyber-society. In all seriousness, imagine posting a status that you have thought about for a good 10 minutes...only to find out that nobody has liked it, commented on it, or anything. They've just thrown out your well thought out status like trash. As my brother once said, 'you only stress about the things you put effort into.' So if you put effort into a status, or a photo, or anything, and nobody 'likes' it, how crappy are you gonna feel? Its this need...this craving, if you will, for likes and comments and notifications that gets the average teen so worked up about whether or not people 'like' them, or appreciate what they post at all. 2. 'Facebook-aholic': Bad enough craving for the likes and the virtual sense of popularity, but there is a psychological side to being addicted to a social networking site. Its an actual addiction...go figure. Source. The fact that many teens are 'addicted' to the site can actually have an adverse affect on their psychological well-being. 3. Mutual likes: It takes a lot of courage to state to the world what your hobbies and interests are, especially if IRL you are relatively socially insecure. Upon discovering that none of your friends like the same things as you, you'd probably want to take it down. Insecurities rise, because you no longer feel free to tell the world who you are, but rather you tell the world you are who they want you to be. Hell yeah, insecurity FTW! 4. Chats and inboxes: This is where the actual 'cyberbullying' happens, provided you're having a bad time on fb chat. Facebook has this new thing on chat, where you can see when the other person got your message. I guess from that, you can tell whether or not people actually want to talk to you. Its indirect cyberbullying...look at that. Then there are of course the hateful messages that you get during chats that you don't want, and when you close the chat and 'appear offline' you get the messages in your inbox...woop dee doo. <-- Thats the actual cyberbullying that is being tackled today. tl;dr: So maybe I'm just a paranoid ****, or maybe I make some sense. Thats for you to decide. Do you reckon social networking sites (I just used facebook as a main example) are harming kids self esteem? I mean, the way I see it, teenagers are better off without it. Hormonal imbalance of adolescents + Social networking=VERY BAD THING. I could be overreacting, but I know from previous experiences I have deleted photos and statuses just because they didn't have enough likes on them. Hell, I once took off Linkin Park from my 'likes' list because none of my friends liked them. The pressure to be socially acceptable in teenagers these days only increases their insecurity and need for a good reputation, hence the internet. So what do you think about Social Networking and its impact on Self Esteem?
i do think that social networking can have a bad effect on self esteem. and that's without cyber bullying. i think for some people, constantly seeing people who are living more interesting lives and achieving more than you causes some kind of jealousy and bitterness. i think the fact that this kind of stuff is constantly in your face causes that to happen. of course this isn't true for everyone.
