Positive Media Influence On Teenagers and youth

Media influence is the actual force exerted by a media message, resulting in either a change or reinforcement in audience or individual beliefs. Media effects are measurable effects that result from media influence, or a media message. Whether that media message has an effect on any of its audience members is contingent on many factors, including audience demographics and psychological characteristics. These effects can be positive or negative, abrupt or gradual, short-term or long-lasting. Not all effects result in change: some media messages reinforce an existing belief. Researchers examine an audience after media exposure for changes in cognition, belief systems, and attitudes, as well as emotional, physiological and behavioral effects


1.Help Develop Awareness:

Most teens live a sheltered life(Positive Media Influence On Teens). But with exposure to various media outlets, they can develop awareness about society and the world. This cultural and political awareness is vital if we want to groom a generation of socially responsible citizens. With news channels, magazines, social networking sites blaring about world happenings, teens can realize that there is more to the world than just what is happening in the ‘hood.

2. Help Develop Social Skills:

Many teens are socially awkward. Positive Media gives them the chance to groom their social skills. It also gives them the chance to expand their social circle and develop new friendships. Other benefits of Positive Media include social confidence, heightened literacy in the media, and more social support. Social media diversifies your teen’s social skills, which in turn helps him navigate successfully through modern society.

3. Inspire Them:

When your teen watches an action flick, don’t just despair about the violence. With a little guidance, Positive Media can use the movie as inspiration! Maybe your teen will decide to take up martial arts training, all thanks to a Bruce Lee movie! Teenagers look up to celebrities, and when a celebrity tells them to stay off drugs, they just might listen.

4. Help Fine Tune Motor Skills:

Video games draw a lot of flak these days. But there’s some good in video games too! There are a few video games that can help teens develop and fine-tune their motor skills and coordination.

5. Help Develop Reading And Writing Skills:

When a celebrity talks of her favorite book, your teenager might be tempted to grab a book too. Not just that, if your teenager wants to be a part of blogs, chat rooms, etc., she’ll need to improve her reading and writing skills.

(Negative Media Influence On Teenagers)
We seem to be drowning in information. But for teenagers, this information overload can be the cause for serious concern. Check out here the negative social media influence on teenagers:

1. Distorted Body Image

2. Making Violence Normal

3. Risky Sexual Behavior

4. Making Everything Commercial

5. Obesity

6. Score Low In School

read more blogs on > https://ngdc.com.eg/

Online Social Network Addiction

Addiction to online social networking, as well as Internet addiction types in general.Are recent and insufficiently investigate phenomena, frequently discuss and sometimes dispute in the psychiatric literature.

Addiction types could affect the addictive nature of SNS is support primarily by the mental preoccupation of many chronic SNS users who as a result tend to neglect other aspects of their social functioning such as family and offline friends.

In addition, according to our own observations, sudden cessation of online social networking (i.e., lack of Internet connection) may in some chronic users cause signs and symptoms that at least partially resemble the ones seen during drug/alcohol/nicotine abstinence syndrome.

Online social networking as a potential addiction disorder has so far been discuss in many publications. SNS addiction represents a relatively new issue in psychiatry research, and as with other potentially SNS-related disorders, many questions remain unanswered.

In 2012, Andreassen et al. develop the Facebook Addiction Scale, a scoring system initially based on a total of 18 items, testing features of addiction such as salience, mood modification, tolerance, withdrawal, conflict, and relapse.

The authors applied the scale along with other questionnaires (such as Addictive Tendencies Scale, Online Sociability Scale, etc.) on a sample of 423 students.

The test show a relatively high reliability and proved to be applicable to the student population. The same year, regarding this study, Griffiths expressed concern that the term “Facebook addiction” may be obsolete due to a large variety of activities that can do it on Facebook besides conventional social networking (i.e., playing games).

Nevertheless, any attempt to design a scoring system that would be able to quantify at least a certain aspect of social networking addiction is, in our opinion, an important addition to the present knowledge in this field.

Questionnaire addiction

Wolniczak et al. recently adapted The Internet Addiction Questionnaire in order to test Facebook dependence in the student population. The authors also tested the sleep quality of Facebook users using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index.

The results showed that Facebook dependence may be related to poor quality of sleep. To our knowledge, this is the first study to modify existing questionnaires for Internet addiction in order to test Facebook use.

Probably, the most important question is whether SNS addiction is actually a mental disorder, and whether it should  diagnosed and treated as such.

The Tenth Revision of the International Classification of Diseases and Health Problems (ICD-10) defined several specific criteria for dependence syndrome such as a strong desire or sense of compulsion.

Difficulties in controlling consumption behavior, physiological withdrawal state after reduction or cessation, evidence of tolerance, and so on. A diagnosis should made if three or more of the above-mentioned criteria are present (at a certain time point) during the previous year.

Addiction types

It is clear that many of these diagnostic criteria could be apple to a minor percentage of chronic Facebook users who, as a result of this prolong computer use, have problems in normal everyday functioning.

However, one must be very careful with this approach, since in the future it could be quite difficult to distinguish SNS addiction from Internet addiction, which is a much more general disorder (Internet addiction disorder, problematic Internet use, or compulsive Internet use).

Furthermore, it should be note that neither Internet nor SNS addiction include the latest disease classification manuals such as Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). In addition, SNS and Internet-relate mental problems are frequently seen together with other diagnose mental illnesses, or, in other words, these problems are complicate by co-morbidity.

Therefore, it remains unclear whether potential SNS addiction is an independent illness, or merely a manifestation of other mental issues such as, for example, personality disorders.

All in all, it remains to see whether SNS addiction will ever be recognizable as a separate mental disorder.

It can be expect that in the future, this issue will be a focal point of many research studies, and that, in the years to come, it will become the subject of a wide debate among psychiatrists, psychologists, and other specialists.

The final results and conclusions will have a substantial impact on the future organization of the mental health system, particularly considering that online social networking affects such a large proportion of the world population.

 

Media communications channels

Media communications channels made many parents worry about how exposure to technology might affect toddlers developmentally,and how Social Media Affects Teenagers .

Media communications channels known by preschoolers are picking up new social and cognitive skills at a stunning pace, and we don’t want hours spent glued to an iPad to impede that. But an equally important period of rapid development, and too few of us are paying attention to how our teenagers’ use of technology.
Much more intense and intimate than a 3-year-old playing with dad’s iPhone—is affecting them.

In fact, experts worry that the social media and text messages that have become so integral to teenage life.And promoting anxiety and lowering self-esteem.

Indirect communication

Teens are masters at keeping themselves occupied in the hours after school until way past bedtime. When they’re not doing their homework (and when they are) they’re online and on their phones, texting, sharing, trolling, scrolling, you name it. Of course before everyone had an Instagram account teens kept themselves busy too. But they were more likely to do their chatting on the phone, or in person when hanging out at the mall.

It may have looked like a lot of aimless hanging around, but what they were doing was experimenting, trying out skills, and succeeding and failing in tons of tiny real-time interaction. kids today are missing out on.

Modern teens are learning to do most of their communication while looking at a screen, not another person

“As a species we are very highly attun to reading social cues,” says Dr. Catherine Steiner-Adair, a clinical psychologist and author of The Big Disconnect. “There’s no question kids are missing out on very critical social skills. In a way, texting and online communicating.

it’s not like it creates a nonverbal learning disability, but it puts everybody in a non-verbal disabled context, where body language, facial expression, and even the smallest kinds of vocal reactions are render invisible.”

Lowering the risks

Certainly speaking indirectly creates a barrier to clear communication, but that’s not all. Learning how to make friends is a major part of growing up, and friendship requires a certain amount of risk-taking. This is true for making a new friend, but it’s also true for maintaining friendships. When there are problems that need to be faced—big ones or small ones.It takes courage to be honest about your feelings and then hear what the other person has to say. Learning to effectively cross these bridges is part of what makes friendship fun and exciting, and also scary. “Part of healthy self-esteem is knowing how to say what you think and feel even when you’re in disagreement with other people or it feels emotionally risky,” notes Dr. Steiner-Adair.

But when friendship is conducted online and through texts, kids are doing this in a context stripp of many of the most personal. It’s easier to keep your guard up when you’re texting, so less is at stake. You aren’t hearing or seeing the effect that your words are having on the other person. Because the conversation isn’t happening in real time, each party can take more time to consider a response. No wonder kids say calling someone on the phone is “too intense”—it requires more direct communication.

If kids aren’t getting enough practice relating to people and getting their needs met in person and in real time.

Many of them will grow up to be adults who are anxious about our species’ primary means of communication—talking. And of course social negotiations only get riskier as people get older and begin navigating romantic relationships and employment.

How To Handle Media Influences On Youth

Exposure to media is a part of modern life, but you can help your child identify what is worth spending time and what isn’t and how Handle Media Influences On Youth . Here are some ways to handle the influence of social media on teenagers:

Tips For Parents:

You as a parent have the responsibility to help your teen make the right choices. Here are a few tips to make media a positive influence in your teen’s life:

Social Media marketing Is a Toxic Mirror

We’ve long understood that movies, magazines and television damage teens’ body image by enforcing a “thin ideal.”

With the rapid aging down of social media marketing and smart phone ownership, most parents spend “digital parenting” time on character coaching, making sure their kids think before they post and refrain from cyber-bullying.

Not anymore. Social media has also become a toxic mirror:

Earlier this year, psychologists found robust cross-cultural evidence linking social media use to body image concerns, dieting, body surveillance, a drive for thinness and self-objectification in adolescents. Note: that doesn’t mean social media cause the problems, but that there’s a strong association between them.

Visual platforms for social media marketing

like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat deliver the tools that allow teens to earn approval for their appearance and compare themselves to others.
The most vulnerable users, researchers say, are the ones who spend most of their time posting, commenting on and comparing themselves to photos.

One study found that female college students who did this on Facebook were more likely to link their self-worth to their looks. Interestingly, while girls report more body image disturbance and disordered eating than boys—studies have shown both can be equally damaged by social media.

All this provides an illusion of control: if I spend more time and really work at it, I can improve at being beautiful. “I don’t get to choose how I’m going to leave my apartment today,” one young woman told me. “If I could, my body would look different. But I can choose which picture makes my arms look thinner.”

But invariably, the line between a “like” and feeling ranked becomes blurred.

What teens share online is dwarfed by what they consume. Pre-Internet, you had to hoof it to the grocery store to find a magazine with celebrity bodies,or at least filch your mother’s copy from the bathroom. Now the pictures are as endless as they are available.

“wellness” industry (social media channel)

The meteoric rise of the “wellness” industry online has launched an entire industry of fitness celebrities on social media. Millions of followers embrace their regimens for diet and exercise, but increasingly, the drive for “wellness” and “clean eating” has become stealthy cover for more dieting and deprivation. Both contained strong language inducing guilt about weight or the body, and promoted dieting, restraint and fat and weight stigmatization. “I had found wellness,” she wrote. “I was not well.”

Many teens are media-literate about movies and magazines; they take in digitally altered images with a critical eye. Less clear is how social media literate they are. The older adolescents I work with often shrug off conversations about the perils of social media with a “duh” or “I know that already.” That doesn’t mean they’re not listening, or feeling worried that their bodies don’t measure up. (Besides, this population is hardly famous for gushing gratitude for parental advice.)

So what can parents do? Ask teens their opinion of the ways people modify their own appearance online: Why do people do it? What do they gain, and from whom? Sometimes just naming a feeling as normal can make a young adult feel less alone. It never hurts to tell your teen they matter more than their looks.

Antisocial content can affect social media message

Anti social media is the reduction of face to face communication from using social media. Generations X-Z generally prefer anti social media to actual personal interaction and share everything in life on line ad nausea. Do I really need to see a jpeg of your latest meal? Or your kid at the pool? Or your buddy passed out after he shit himself?


Zuckerberg’s challenge of the antisocial content

antisocial content behavior beat by Facebook who will hire 3,000 people to monitor content after recent instances of users streaming disturbing acts online on its ‘Live’ service.
Also It may be a very hands-on approach for an internet giant to rely on humans instead of algorithms to get a job done, but here’s why monitoring content on social media is proving to be such a challenge…

Post overload

A quarter of the world’s population (1.94 billion people) now uses Facebook every month; nearly 1.3 billion use it daily. Watchers say Facebook’s trillions of posts may be becoming too big for its computer algorithms and current staff to manage.
Most of the company’s current content reviewers are low-paid contractors overseas who spend just a few seconds on each post. A study last year found they inconsistently apply Facebook’s standards

Censorship and free speech balance

Facebook video purposes to share millions of personal stories. It has also been used to document events of public interest, such as a series of police shootings of unarmed black men in US that sparked a national debate on race and policing.Their is an argue of ‘distressing speech is sometimes the most important to a public conversation’, so censorship often proves to be an issue.

Human solution

Experts say hiring more moderators will boost monitoring as ‘humans tend to have more nuance and context than an algorithm’. But Zuckerberg has told investors, ‘no matter how many people we have on the team, we’ll never be able to look at everything’. Facebook feels that artificial intelligence tools will eventually allow reviewers to do a better job of reviewing content.
On Facebook, a video, picture or any other piece of content reaches the review team after it is reported by users for flouting its ‘community guidelines’.

Facebook is not the only one

Google, too, has struggled with content issues involving its YouTube video service. An automated advertising system that sometimes places ads next to questionable content has also proved troublesome.
Google reportedly has ‘a 10,000-strong army of independent contractors to flag offensive or upsetting content’ in search results. One expert estimates that globally, ‘well over 100,000’ people, many of them low-paid workers in countries like the Philippines, are paying to police online content.

Twitter’s case

For years, Twitter has faced criticism for the rampant abuse some of its users inflict on others. In 2015, Twitter said it was tripling the size of its staff handling abuse complaints, but complaints persist of online abuse.

10 ways to stay safe on public WiFi networks

Surfing safe: Free WiFi is a windfall, especially if you’re working from the library or airport, or if you just want to save data on your phone or laptop. Still, you do have to care about security when you’re out and about. Here’s how to surf safely, on any device.

 

1.   Practice good internet hygiene

Perhaps the f irst and biggest piece of advice one can give you, is to practice good internet hygiene. Avoid working with sensitive data when you’re using unsecured WiFi. It may be a good time to check the news, stream music or read your favourite blogs, but it’s not the best time to do online banking.

2.   Use the right networks (and avoid the bad ones)

Not every public WiFi network is created equally. For example, that ‘Free Airport WiFi’ network lurking in the background is worse than any WiFi network provided by one of the coffee shops, stores, or retailers in the airport.

3.   Use semi-open WiFi networks instead

You may not have a choice when it comes to what network you use, but if you do have a choice, consider ‘semi-open’ WiFi instead of completely open networks.

Consider ones that serve airport lounges, or nearby coffee shops that put their passwords on receipts instead of giving them out freely.

4.   Turn off file sharing options

You may not be able to control who is on what network that you a reusing, but you can control your computer. Turn off file sharing in Windows and macOS, enable your system’s built-in firewalls, and keep internetconnected apps and services to a minimum.

 

5.   Turn WiFi off when not in use

When you are finished work ing online, turn WiFi off on your laptop, tablet , or smart phone. It’s a nice security habit to get used to when you are using untrusted networks (if you have to use them at all), and it’ll also save your battery.

6.   Install privacy protecting browser extensions

You probably already use an ad blocker, but a good, customization one like u Block Origin gives you control over what’s blocked and what isn’t when you want it.

Disconnect is another great option, as it also protects you from the same-network attacks

7.   Keep your antivirus up-to-date

If you ever use public, untrusted networks, make sure your computer is running some kind of antimalware utility and complementary antivirus utility as well. For the former, you can use Malwarebytes. For the latter, you have options like Avira for Windows and Sophos for macOS.

8.   Use HTTPS everywhere you can

Anywhere HTTPS works , use it. And HTTPS Everywhere, from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, can make sure you do.

It’s not perfect security, but making sure your connection to a given site is secure means at least the information send to you (and that you send to the site) is encrypted.

9.   Use a VPN

Whether you use a third-party VPN service provider or roll your own VPN at home and connect to it when you’re out and about, using one makes sure that all of your data is encrypted between you and the service provider, locking out anyone on the same network as you who might be snooping around.

10. Bring your own WiFi instead

The real protection from an untrusted network is not using it at all, and bringing your own. Whether you use a mobile hotspot like a MiFi or a Karma, or just tether to your smart phone and use your wireless carrier’s data , both approaches get you off the sketchy public WiFi.

Social media sites that failed to become Facebook

Social media is the collective of online communications channels dedicated to community-based input, interaction, content-sharing and collaboration.Websites and applications dedicated to forums, micro-blogging, social networking, social bookmarking, social curation, and wikis are among the different types of social media.

social media sites are computer-mediated technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, career interests and other forms of expression via virtual communities and networks. The variety of stand-alone and built-in social media services currently available introduces challenges of definition.

1) Orkut

FOUNDER: Orkut Buyukkokten
LAUNCHED: January 2004
PRESENT STATUS: Shut in September 2014

Started by Buyukkokten, a Turkish engineer at Google, Orkut was the result of the search giant’s failure to buy Friendster. Orkut, while not much of a success in the US, proved big in Brazil and India, its two key markets. But in September 2010, Facebook, which debuted two weeks after Orkut’s launch, went past Orkut in terms of number of users in India, and a year later, did the same in Brazil.

Orkut had 19 million users in India and 34 million in Brazil, when it lost the top spot to Facebook. Google fi nally shut Orkut on September 30, 2014.

2)  MySpace

FOUNDER: Chris DeWolfe, Tom Anderson
LAUNCHED: August 2003
PRESENT STATUS: Active

It may be hard to imagine how big MySpace was. In 2006, it beat Yahoo and Google to become the largest website in the US by page views. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp had bought it the previous year for $580 million. Its valuation shot up to a staggering $12 billion in 2007, when it had 300 million users.

But it was all downhill for the site from there as Facebook closed the gap with MySpace and became the largest social networking site. News Corp sold MySpace in June 2011 for just $35 million.

3)  Friendster

FOUNDER: Jonathan Abrams, Peter Chin
LAUNCHED: March 2002
PRESENT STATUS: Shifted to online gaming in 2011 and shut down in June 2015

Within a year of its launch, Friendster had three million users but soon had to contend with the likes of MySpace and Facebook.

It was sold to a Malaysian internet company in 2009 reportedly for $100 million. At the time of the sale, Friendster had around 75 million users in Asia. Friendster turn it into an online gaming platform in 2011 and was disabled four years later.

4)  SixDegrees

FOUNDER: Andrew Weinreich
LAUNCHED: January 1997
PRESENT STATUS: Shut down in 2001

The start of social media sites which is  the first social networking sites along with Classmates, SixDegrees had a user base of 3.5 million at its peak but the limitations of internet connectivity meant it was an idea ahead of its time.

(Youth Stream Media Networks) buy it for $125 million in 1999 and shut down two years later.

5)  Hi5

FOUNDER: Ramu Yalamanchi
LAUNCHED: June 2004
PRESENT STATUS: Active

Among the most popular social networking sites for a few years after its launch, Hi5 was second only to MySpace in 2007.

It was sold to another social network, Tagged, in 2011 and they were both bought by social discovery platform MeetMe for $60 million earlier this year.

6)  Classmates

FOUNDER: Randy Conrads
LAUNCHED: December 2005
PRESENT STATUS: Active

Founded as a way to get in touch with your friends from school and college, Classmates still remains just that, with access to decades-old yearbooks from schools across the US.

The website was bought by United Online in 2004 for a $100 million and in 2015 was sold for a third of that price.

 

7)  Google+

LAUNCHED: June 2011
PRESENT STATUS: Active

Smarting from its failed attempts in social networking through Orkut and Buzz, Google decided to take Facebook head-on with Google+. Integrated into Gmail, Google+ tried a slightly different approach to social networking than Facebook, offering users the option of categorising their friends into “circles”.

Social Networking Can Help Your Career through 5 ways

Social network help your carer through this count down which starts with:

5. Online Profiles and Resumes Are Always On

One of the advantages of the Internet is that it is always on. This means that you can post your professional skills and experience, and make that information available to people anywhere, anytime. It also means that you can search for information about others, both in and out of your social network

4. Communicate Changes in Your Career As They Happen

You develop your social network by meeting people and keeping in touch with them over time. One advantage of having a strong social network is that you can keep your associates informed about changes in your career as they’re happening. As you spread the news, the people in your network, especially professional contacts, can provide timely advice or help to find the resources you need.

3. Discover Career Paths You Hadn’t Thought Of


When you’re focused on the responsibilities of your current job, sometimes it’s easy to overlook opportunities waiting around the corner. Your social network can help you stay in touch with these opportunities. This could mean doing the same job in a new scenario or taking a completely new path you’d never considered.

To make these discoveries, start by staying informed about those in your social network who have the same or similar career paths to your own. For example, if you’re a nurse, look to those who are nurses or have a nursing background. If you’re looking to go on a new path, including changing your career altogether, look to those who are already on that path.
Look for opportunities to add to your direct social network connections through introductions.

2) Make New Contacts Through People You Know


People will come and go in your professional experiences, but they all make up the fabric of your social network. Yesterday’s high school classmate might be today’s business partner. Today’s teammates and supervisors might be tomorrow’s valued contacts and references.

The benefits of your social network don’t just end with the people you know. When you have a positive professional relationship with someone, you can put in a good word for that person with others you know, and that person can do the same for you. This could lead to introductions that extend the direct connections you have within your social network.

1) Let the Job Find You


All the social networking benefits covered so far provide the basis for this ultimate benefit. The Internet is always on, and you can keep your social network informed about your current skills, job status, and career goals. Also, your associates may have contacts who would appreciate being introduced to someone with your skills and experience. You may receive inquiries about jobs you’re qualified for, but that you may have never have considered.

If you have a strong social network, don’t be surprised if someone contacts you looking for someone with your skills and experience. If your profile is online, you could hear from people you’ve never met. Recruiters and prospective employers often look at professional Web sites like LinkedIn in hopes of making new connections