The Impact of Social Media on Children's Minds and Brains

This article discusses the negative and positive impacts of social media on children's minds and brains. It highlights the fact that social media can have a long-lasting negative impact on children's minds, but it can also be used to teach them about adult issues. The article suggests that parents should guide their children to use social media in a positive way and teach them about both the good and bad sides of using social media platforms. The article also emphasizes the importance of face-to-face communication and counseling to overcome the challenges of using social media.

Running head: COMMUNICATIONS AND SOCIAL CHANGE
Communications and Social Change
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1COMMUNICATIONS AND SOCIAL CHANGE
Before attending class
Social media has been a very strong medium of influence on the people of different ages.
Especially it has a very long lasting negative impact on the minds of the children. All types of
media like the television, comic books and the comic games. The social media has laid huge
impacts on their minds for several years now (Childmind.org, 2018). The parents are very much
worried about the fact that the use of technology is harming the mind and the brains of the
children. This is why the growing time of the children is very much important for the growth of
their skills too (Madden et al., 2013).
The use of technology and use of social media tools like Facebook and Instagram have
been increased a lot in this era. This is why most people have become quite addicted to it. It has
been seen in many cases that the little children start playing with the iPhone or iPad of their
parents (Strasburger et al., 2013). The bad impacts of the social media are that it deviates the
mind of the people from their normal course of work. This is why the children should be kept
away from the use of the social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram (Boyd, 2014).
However, the children can also gather some good habits from using the social media as well. The
children should be able to learn about the adult issues from the social media platforms like
Facebook (Childmind.org, 2018).
After attending class
It is a very important fact that the children should be guided in the positive ways indeed.
However they should teach about the adult issues as well (Strasburger et al., 2013). This is why
the parents themselves should make them understand these issues by the help of the social media.
As the parents are the best teachers they should take the initiatives of teaching the children about

2COMMUNICATIONS AND SOCIAL CHANGE
these adult issues. These issues are very delicate and the children can interpret it in a negative
way if they come to know about these issues from others than the parents. The parents should
teach them about both the good and bad sides of using these social media platforms like
Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram (Childmind.org, 2018). They should make the
children aware that too much addiction to these social media platforms would lead them to low
self-esteem and too much anxiety.
Thus they should be able to overcome the disadvantages and challenges of using the
social media and utilize the best things (Boyd, 2014). Through using the social media, the
parents can tell their children and aware them about the racism. One of the major problems in the
using of the social media is the fact they are very much engrossed in the mobile screens and they
are unable to communicate with another person through face to face communication (Madden et
al., 2013). These problems should be get rid of by a thorough counseling indeed. However, the
good effects of using social media should be embedded within the children. This journal article
has been chosen in order to gather some additional knowledge about the effects of the social
media platforms on the brain and mind of the children. Many impacts of the social media have
been provided here in this article. The current examples say that the children are quite addicted
to Facebook and Instagram (Childmind.org, 2018). They spend most of their times for these
social media sites. Sometimes their mind gets diverted from the normal flow and they act in an
awkward way indeed. These things are very annoying for the parents and sometimes the children
are sent for rehabilitation as well.

3COMMUNICATIONS AND SOCIAL CHANGE
References
Boyd, D. (2014). It's complicated: The social lives of networked teens. Yale University Press.
Childmind.org. (2018). How Using Social Media Affects Teenagers. Child Mind Institute.
Retrieved 10 April 2018, from https://childmind.org/article/how-using-social-media-
affects-teenagers/
Madden, M., Lenhart, A., Cortesi, S., Gasser, U., Duggan, M., Smith, A., & Beaton, M. (2013).
Teens, social media, and privacy. Pew Research Center, 21, 2-86.
Strasburger, V. C., Hogan, M. J., Mulligan, D. A., Ameenuddin, N., Christakis, D. A., Cross,
C., ... & Moreno, M. A. (2013). Children, adolescents, and the media. Pediatrics, 132(5),
958-961.