Susanna Shrobsdorff

Sherry Turkle's article "Growing Up Tethered" exposes the change in adolescent's demeanor while growing up in a technology-fueled world. This modern world inhibits growth towards independence, causes psychological problems, and an intense amount of pressure to uphold online identities. She opens up with various experiences today's youth have gone through trying to stay connected. Some go as far as to risk their own lives and the lives of others to check their phone.

In her book, It's Complicated, Danah Boyd expresses her views on modern-day social media and the modern-day teenager's reliability with it. The book is comprised of 8 enlightening categories: identity, privacy, addiction, danger, bullying, inequality, literacy, and searching for a public of their own. Throughout the book, Boyd provides data, true stories, and factual conversations to help support her main claim: social media has taken over our youth.

The article Generation Z: Online and At Risk? by Nicholas Kardaras discusses how social media is affecting societies’ youth and essentially destroying their social and mental development. The article begins with a tragic story of a thirteen year old girl who becomes infuriated with rage when her parents take away her access to social media and must be sadly taken to a psychiatric emergency room for the second time. This story leads into the discussion of social media addiction as a concerning health issue for teens and developing youth. The article provides many valid sources and studies to show how the over use of social media is correlated with depression, drug and alcohol use, loss of sleep, academic failure, and a rollercoaster of emotional

Kardaras, Nicolas. "Generation Z: Online and at Risk?." Scientific American Mind, vol. 27, no. 5, Sep/Oct 2016, pp. 64-9. MasterFILE Premier. Kardars discuss generation z use of social media affecting them negatively. He opens his article with a story of Heidi who becomes addicted to social media when her school issues her a Chromebook. Before Heidi is issued the laptop, she was a sweet innocent girl and after having it for a semester she became someone her parents could not recognize. He states that social media is a “perfect storm” for humans because having a social connection key to “happiness and health”. Having the ability to always use social media leads to hyper texting the illusion of a real connection making it hard for teens to have face to face conversations, making a teens become “glow kid[s]“, someone who is raised on mostly digital social interactions. Facebook depression” can result in the teen to have lower grades and behavior problems in teens. He concludes his article with facts proving that Facebook can become addictive in some people. This source helps support my thesis that Facebook affects teens mental health.

Technology is becoming to be a large part of society and has a growing impact on our personal lives. Jean Twenge uses this reasoning to effectively discuss the mental issues arising in “iGen” and how social media, sleep deprivation, and usage of technology are negatively affecting teenagers of this generation. This is an important topic to discuss because in 2011, statistics showed that the teen suicide rate was higher than the teen homicide rate for the first time in 24 years (Twenge). Twenge uses facts like this to appeal to parents to try to make them recognize that their own kids could be in danger of depression and hurting themselves and what could be large contributors. Twenge backs up her argument by using her background as a professor at San Diego University and her studies of generational differences to support her claim. Although Jean Twenge tries to use her power to make parents embrace their parental

RE: ¨Teen Depression and Anxiety: Why the Kids Are Not Alright” commentary Oct 26, 2016. Susanna Schrobsdorff makes a very valid point right off the bat that depression and anxiety in teens is so much more prevalent now because we have no way of escaping the world. Because of most of teens today growing up in a socially run world, we have no way of distinguishing between our online lives and our real lives. I see where she is right in this and I think she is right in saying that it is a different environment than what our parents grew up in, but there are always two sides of the story.

One example is Amino; Amino is an app that has a myriad of groups on it for all different interests, scaling from videogames to fingernail painting, to soccer. People on this site can share pictures, create blogs, enter chatrooms with other people to discuss their chosen topic and can potentially meet someone new. This takes the basic idea of common interest and expands it into a social network. Amino is just one of many platforms of social media. This increase in communication and relationship building seems harmless but it has slowly become an addiction. In the article “The Ugly Toll of Technology” by Tara Parker-Pope, she discusses how kids and young adults are addicted to technology; this addiction is causing harm to our mental and emotional well-being. People have been using technology, specifically social media, as a social crutch to communicate to others in our daily lives. Similar to drugs abuse, without technology, many people cannot function on a normal basis. This new for way of communicating is slowly making physical conversation obsolete. The International Center Media and the Public Agenda at the University of Maryland conducted a study where

Hilary Stout’s a writer of The New York Times is expressing her opinions on how social media affects teenagers by not getting experience and develop empathy for others, understand different emotions, and recognizing others facial expressions and body language in her article “Antisocial Networking?”. In my opinion Stout's argument is wrong because teens today have more experiences on social media because it is an easy and powerful way to connect with people.

Turkle discusses the online personalities adolescents form to gain more confidence in who they are. These personalities’ form a constant need to stay connected and these teens have developed the willingness to put themselves in danger to do so. The new generation of adolescents feel a pull to be at a beckons call to every notification delivered to their cellular device. She argues these teens have been raised in a different manner compared to those of whom were teenagers twenty years ago. All of these factors lead into a war between technology and society of which hinders our young people’s development. Adolescents are bound to the constant desire to have a connection to technology and the luxuries the technology

However, Twenge makes an emphasis on the decline of mental wellness that smartphones seem to cause. She includes quotes from teens in her article stating how certain environments on smartphones, such as social media, effect their emotions. Twenge says that teens not invited to social events are made very aware through posts from friends on social media, leading to feelings of loneliness and exclusion. In addition, cyberbullying is a majorly targeted issue, teens who spend more time on their phones are more likely to be bullied online which can lead to depression. There are also percentages of the increase teens who report feelings of loneliness or wishing for a good friend, things that can lead to depression. She explains how allowing for more room for feelings of loneliness and exclusion to lead to depression can eventually lead to suicide. The article explains how smartphones can become a hazard if slept with in bed as well as how they can lead to sleep deprivation. She explains how teens use language of addiction when they speak of their

In chapter 6, it highlights the effects of social media on society as a whole. In “How Using Social Media Affects Teenagers,” by Rachel Ehme demonstrates how parents are worried about the future generations exposure to social media and new technology. Adolescence is a fragile time because these teens are rapidly developing. They are at risk to anxiety and low self esteem.

By spending inordinate quantities of time in the interactive, virtual, two-dimensional, cyberspace realms of the screen, she believes that the brains of the youth of today are headed for a drastic alteration.” (10) Numerous youth that interact online come in contact with people who are pretending to be someone that they are not. That causes the “pretenders” to lose touch with their personal identity and reality. It also causes the youth that they chat with to falsely learn about people. How could you possibly have strong relationships with people that you don’t really know accurate information about?

¨The benefits of our increasingly digital lives have been accompanied by new dangers, and we have forced to consider how criminals and terrorists might use advances in technology to their advantage¨(James Comey). Rory Vaughn, a sixteen-year-old, who just got accepted into her goal of going to this great high school. Rory’s mother went to this high school and her mother dropped out because she was pregnant. Rory uncovers some dark secrets about her family. Now, Rory has got some enemies at school that are trying to get rid of her. Lauren Miller warns society about danger of technology can cause society to be attached in Free to Fall. Based on Annie Y.S.’s article “Social media in health- what are the safety concerns for health consumers?”, society

Macklin’s point is that people have become so dependent Internet that is has strongly effected everyday life. “Even 15-year old boys are sharing some part of their feelings with someone out there”(Goldwasser 237). By stating this Goldwasser demonstrates how dependent teens have become on the Internet. People are beginning to avoid any personal interaction and they are taking their problems to the computer where they will spend hours trying to make themselves feel better. This way of coping could not only be dangerous for ones health but it could be extremely risky.

From having good grades, to studying for the ACT, in addition to trying to fit into the social aspect in high school a teens life has never been more hard. And the invention of the smartphone has only added to the amount of stress that a teen has to deal with. The smartphone has created an environment in which adolescents are always connected with those they go to highschool with, through the use of social media. For example if a bully were to be picking on a student at school the student could not just go home and forget about the incident, but now the bully has the ability to abuse that student at any point he/she desires. These types of incidents are creating a new wave of problems for adolescents and their parents, Nojiri Matthew interviewed Rick Wolf (assistant superintendent at Mifflin School district) explaining “The increase in social media use has added another element when identifying and caring for kids dealing with anxiety, depression, eating disorders, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and other mental health disorders, Wolf said” (Wolf). The smartphone is the catalyst to these problems. If you were to take away the smartphone problems such as cyberbullying would be less of an issue. However adolescents these days are given smartphones at such a young age, with no supervision on how long they use it throughout the day, that it becomes second nature to be looking at it every minute of everyday checking their social media profiles.