Final Blog Summarising What Has Been Discussed Throughout

Blog post #7

Hello again, Bloggers and blogger enthusiasts!

Thank you for having a look at my previous blog post, I hope it was an insightful read and you are now more knowledgeable on the matter. My last blog post looked at young people’s perceptions of what has been discussed in previous posts. This blog post will be a summary of the topics that have been discussed in every other blog post.

This will be my final blog post as college is coming to an end and I will be moving on to bigger and better things at university. Therefore, this blog post will summarise the main points from each blog post.

Firstly, social media can influence what young people spend their money on hugely. People post pictures and videos of their flashy lifestyles which can lead to young people sometimes putting themselves in debt to live the same lives of the people they see on Instagram. Young people may get down about not owning these materialistic things and living these luxurious lives, things may not be what they seem as they are through a mobile or computer screen. The term “money can’t buy you happiness” couldn’t be more accurate. There are many things in this world that money simply cannot buy, like manners, love and trust.

Secondly, thanks to the very high and mostly unrealistic body expectations that society expects, young people have become so focused on the fact that they must look good in every picture they take to gain the approval of their online peers (followers) and to gain lots of attention and popularity (likes). This includes comparing themselves to the hundreds of other girls and guys they see on their news feed who have “the perfect figure” or “the perfect look.” Terms like these make young people feel as though that they must look like these people who are branded as these terms, to fit in or become popular, for example. Therefore if these young people don’t look like the people who are branded as these terms, then they use filters and Photoshop on their photos to dramatically change the way they look online in order to gain approval, popularity etc. This is a very bad thing as they forget what's more important in life, like making themselves happy, instead of trying to please others.

Thirdly, thanks to the vast development of technology, face to face bullying has become something of the past. People have now moved on to bullying through technology. This can be done through the use of phones and the internet. This allows a person to bully another person at any time of the day, especially through social media because it is always active. To prevent this, many schools now train pupils in e-safety and ‘netiquette’ to equip them with the vital tools that they will need to understand the harsh reality of the digital world. An effective technique to stop cyber-bullying is to block bullying behaviour online by clicking the report button on social media sites.

Fourthly, because social media is so constant, young people feel the need to always be online just in case they miss something important that involves their friends. This can lead to mental health problems like anxiety as young people feel as though they must reply instantly to friends online through instant messaging and group chats. Young people need to realise that not constantly being online isn’t the end of the world and that there are a lot more important things that they should be focusing on instead, like hobbies, interests and school work/exams. Social media can ruin a young person’s happiness.

Lastly, the primary research that was carried out showed that young people are aware of the negatives and positives of social media, but still think that social media is a positive thing in terms of how it reflects on their lives.

Overall, social media is a great communications tool which makes it easier for people to keep in contact with their friends and relatives, however there are a lot of problems with social media that can reflect on young people very badly.

I hope the last couple of months have been insightful for you and you now have a bit more of an understanding of how social media can have an impact on young people’s lives.

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog.

Goodbye for now...