“86% of young people always carry their smartphone with them”
“60% of young people feels restless as they receive a message and they can not view directly”
“Young people in the age of 13-18 suffering from a severe form of “social media stress”. “
These are some quotes of findings of a research of the Dutch National Academy of Media and Society. This investigation is done at 500 adolescents and is combined with some American Studies about FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out)
Nowadays, social media like Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter are constantly accessable via smartphone. Through special sounds and push messages will frequently be asked to respond to messages.
Ability to concentrate
Most of the adolecents say that they experience stress because they are afraid of social exclusion or missing things. Besides that it is also important for adolescents to present themself on the right way on social media, because on social media everybody occur to be better than in normal life. This feelings will cause pressure and will lead to uncertainty but also to powerlessness and low self-esteem.
They also point out that the use of social media sometimes will be at the expenses of concentration, school results, sports, (real) contact with friends and family and sleep. But they don’t know how to deal with it.
To take action of all this, the National Academy of Media and Society has made a website called: ikbenoffline.nl (translation: i am offline) and started a campaign focused on primary and secundary schools to get attention on the occurrence of this social media stress of adolescents. On the website ikbenoffline.nl you will find material “how to live without being online 24/7”, for example tips, posters and t-shirts and a game of goose (NL: Ganzenbord) a dutch boardgame.
The campaign has started in may 2012 and is still running.
Hopefully is this a good way to prevent SMS and FOMO at adolescents the future!
Sources
http://www.mediaenmaatschappij.nl/images/artikelen/PDF/Onderzoekrapportage%20Jongeren%20lijden%20aan%20Social%20Media%20Stress%20(SMS),%20mei%202012.pdf
http://www.ikbenoffline.org/
http://www.mediaenmaatschappij.nl/index.php/publiciteit/publicaties/253-nieuwsbericht-lessenserie-ik-ben-offline-over-social-media-stress
http://nos.nl/artikel/370646-stress-jongeren-door-sociale-media.html
The internet addiction has become a world wide phenomena, as the major victims are the young people, this problem deserves further concern. I don’s think the internet or social media tools should take the full responsibility, but the lack of care in the real life. teenager can not find things they are interested in, can not find people they can really talk to, so they had to look for help in the virtual world. I believe that to prevent things get worse, it is vital to give more care of what those young people really want, instead of simply forbid their use of intent.
I am quite sure that every (or almost every) of us, including me, is addicted on social networks and internet. Sometimes we say that it is harmful for our studying process or real-life relationships and conversations, however, at the same time it is amazing opportunity to communicate with people who are far from us, it is one of the greatest inventions. There are 2 key problems which are following:
First of all, founders of this media understand that time spent by users on their web-site may bring income; and more time users spend, more money you as a founder and owner may get from advertising campaigns. Hence, owners/founders + their management and support teams try to prolong users stay on sites devising new features or implementing new applications etc.
Secondly, we have forgotten ourselves the main purpose of using the social networks. That’s why we don’t make a single effort to meet new people, for example, who came to a new class; instead we just take our smartphones and start surfing Facebook and just chatting with our old friends, waiting for a professor and beginning of a lecture.
Taking everything written above into consideration, I may just support ikbenoffline.nl project! We really need to use social media/networks, but in very appropriate way which wouldn’t waste time or take our concentration on it!