Eighty-five percent of the 7.1 billion people in the world utilize the internet every day. Seventy-four percent of those people become addicted to social media. Social media are sites are where people can share pictures, communicate easily, blog about their day, and look up information. Social Media has been around for a long time, ever since the late 1960’s, the first form of it being Bulletin Board Systems (BSS). Nowadays, the youth have lived with newer social media sites like Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, et cetera.

Social Media has influenced all of today’s youth from teens to get this…Toddlers! Social Media is a way to communicate with most of the world nowadays, but let’s be frank with each other, is social media good or depriving the children from face to face chats? Recent studies have shown that teens and adults are addicted to social media; however, not everything is totally bad about it!

As teens become more and more enthralled with social media, their everyday attitudes and behaviors begin to change. Studies show that minors who are frequently active on social media sites are more likely to use drugs and alcohol, be more sexually active, be more prone to “sexts” and violence. Today it is normal for modern technology to show many forms of violence such as gun battles, riots, sniper attacks, and acts of physical violence. Users of too much social media are ninety-four percent more likely to have been in a physical fight. These acts of violence may influence children and teens to be more aggressive in everyday life.

According to psychiatrist and neuroscience researcher Sean Lou of Columbia University, studies have shown that “3.7 to 13 percent of U.S. and 10 percent of South Korean Internet users express some symptoms of inappropriate Internet usage.” He estimates that at least 1 percent of Internet users WORLDWIDE need treatment for this Internet addiction that is now called “Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD)”. Other subtypes of Internet addiction -- such as social media addiction -- have not been studied enough to receive their own clinical definitions or treatment recommendations.

However, social media isn’t all bad. In fact, according to a report made in 2013 by the non profit child advocacy group Common Sense Media, one in five teens said that social media has made them more confident of themselves, whilst the remaining 4% said that it makes them feel less so. As well as that, in the survey of more than 1000 13-17 year olds about how they view their digital lives, 28% said social networking made them feel outgoing versus the 5% who said it made them feel less so; and 29% said it made them feel less shy and more confident while 3% said they didn’t.

When it comes to relationships with friends, more than half (52%) of teens said social media has made them better versus just 4% who said it has negatively affected those relationships. "On the whole, teens said that they feel that social media has a more positive than negative impact on their social and emotional lives," said Shira Lee Katz, Common Sense Media's director of digital media. "They believe that social media helps their friendships, makes them feel more outgoing and gives them confidence."

But, even with all these statistics showing that social media is good and what not, it can harm the teens physically and mentally. I know, from experience, that cyber bullying, a HUGE cause for depression, has affected the youth among us. In February 2015, researchers Sameer Hinduja and Justin W. Patchin conducted a survey where they have surveyed 457 students from a random school in the Midwestern United States. 49.4 percent of the students claimed that they have been bullied before, whilst 38.9 percent have claimed to have bullied someone else. 
As well as that, social media has led to over-sharing and privacy loss. This is perhaps the biggest impact for the worse that social networking as a whole is having on society. The very concept of privacy seems to be inexorably eroding, and at a fantastic pace. Those of us who are connected to the Internet are connected 24/7, and we have immersed ourselves in an extension of society in which privacy is not treated with the high regard it is offline.
It isn’t just social networks that are to blame for this, but Facebook has led the way in showing how powerful a tool it can be in coercing people to happily give up personal information. Most of us list our full name and birthday, reveal who our family members are, share our work history, our hobbies and interests, and even what we like and dislike. And we’re doing so without any kind of prodding or pushing. Most people would rightly refuse to walk around with a billboard attached to their front revealing all and sundry to the world. Yet we do just that on social networking sites, a dream for advertisers and marketers, but a nightmare for the rest of us.

School kids are growing up in an unusual time. This is the first generation who have grown up with a truly ubiquitous internet, they’re first for whom a time before Facebook is incomprehensible. How can those who grew up without the internet connect and teach this new generation for whom a keyboard may feel more natural than a pen? Well, an Amsterdam school has come up with a fun and inventive solution using Facebook’s timeline feature. To teach four periods of history: Magellan’s voyage, the rise and fall of the soviet union, inventions of the 20th century,and Fashion from the 50s onward; the school uses the cover photos, which are the focal point of the page, to draw people in with eye-catching pictures such as a map of Ferdinand Magellan’s voyage across the globe. Then by using the timeline feature, which allows people to add ‘events’ to a Facebook page, the school has detailed the major events of historical subjects. It’s a simple and elegant solution that enables kids to learn historical information in a fun and accessible way.

Social media has become a key driver for social good, leading to more traditional methods of generating support and involvement for causes, according to the new quantitative study, “Digital Persuasion: How Social Media Motivates Action and Drives Support for Causes.” The study was released today by Georgetown University Center for Social Impact Communication and integrated communications agency Waggener Edstrom Worldwide (WE)’s Social Innovation practice. The study found that more than half (55 percent) of digitally active, cause-savvy American adults were likely to do far more than simply “like” a cause. Engaging with causes via social media prompted them to donate money (68 percent), donate personal items or food (52 percent), attend or participate in an event (43 percent), and even volunteer (53 percent).

So what is the greater impact of social media actually? Like ITV News reporter, Mark Austin said: “The truth is , we don’t know the truth.” Yes, it may seems scary, and it may make you worry about it. But researchers still can’t decide on wether social media is good or not. But whatever you chose, is your belief. Is social media good, or is it not?