Addiction
Teach children at a young age
No one is born addicted to a thing. It’s the lifestyle that is surrounding us and perhaps offered to us. Some parents use technology to get away from their children’s tantrums. Some of young people use selfies and other apps for amusement, keeping them distracted from daily affairs. Not to blame completely the lifestyle at home, but I think it’s what children are offered and what becomes a habit from a young age.
There are pros and cons to social media in our lives. What needs to be realised is, who or what is in charge of your life?
There is an increase of decreased communication with one another since all the updates on the social media. I have been in situations where I’m talking about something that was already said and seen in social media. Now I feel I am boring!
Digitalisation is unstoppable and it is the future. Banks, retailers, governments or airlines are digitalising. Should there be a concern for the younger generation? This is the reality how the internet has not only made our lives easier, it has become a life, love, breakup and death updating tool.
Teens on social apps is a growing concern for technology addiction because of its rewarding and entertaining mechanism. By providing teenagers with more options to enjoy life and get entertained like, sports campaigns, art, cooking or volunteering for good causes, we help them realise there is more to life than being shelled in a social network. In the worst case scenario, if there are is not proper planning and attention at an early age, the addiction concerns will increase and so will the symptoms of addictions.
From Ms Manal Al Ansari
A Innovation Manager at a financial institution in Dubai
Self-expression
A generational panic
It may seem true that the use of social media by teenagers creates a trivial and shallow culture making children unable to socialise face-to-face, but I don’t believe this is the true reality. The frightening accounts of addictions and aggression supposedly caused by violent videogames further fuels the fire. Parents can’t stop worrying about these issues. But, these really don’t reflect the social behaviour of the majority of teenagers.
New technologies provoke generational panic, which has more to do with adult fears than with the lives of teenagers. Recollect 1930s, when parents fretted about the radio gaining an invincible hold on their children. In the 1980s, the great danger was the Walkman – producing the teenager who is engrossed in their music. In today’s digital activity, the facts are much more positive than you might expect.
Amanda Lenhart from Pew Research Centre, a US think tank, found that the most avid texting children are also keen to spend time with friends in person. One form of socialising doesn’t replace the other. It augments it.
Facebook allows them to know what’s happening among friends and family, according to Rebecca Eynon, a researcher from the Oxford Internet Institute, who interviewed 200 British teenagers. With experience of living online, they adjust their behaviour, wrestling with new communication skills, as they do in the real world.
Teenagers are also conscious about privacy. They spend hours tweaking Facebook settings, using quick-delete sharing tools, like Snapchat, to minimise their traces. They post photographs on Instagram and delete its traces after pleasant conversations with friends.
The online world offers teenagers opportunities to become literate and creative as they can now publish ideas not just to their friends, but to the world, hence it’s a necessary platform for their expression.
From Mr Sumanata Banerjee
Chief financial officer and chartered accountant, based in Dubai
Destroying English
Language is an art, don’t abuse it!
Since the very start of social media, through SMS, word butchery began. If there wasn’t a suitable short form version of a word, then one would be created. Sadly, in order to “be seen” as keeping up with the modern age, even well respected dictionaries are adding many new words each year that most of us - apart from our teenagers - have no idea as to the meaning. It is like they have devised a secret “anti-adult” secret code in order to indulge in private conversations that the older generation cannot decipher. If it’s brevity they want – why not let them learn shorthand?
If this practice continues, communication between the age gaps will cease and this will give rise to so many negative attitudes in our modern day teenagers that, they should note, will be the adults of the future.
Imagine turning up for a job interview and talking a load of gibberish that the prospective employer has no clue about. Imagine trying to describe something to someone else. They may as well be in Italy speaking Urdu for all the sense it would make. Once they have downloaded and retained only this newfangled “speak” that becomes their everyday norm, will they know what people are saying to them when talking to them in concise and correct English?
Seriously to our teenage mutants: get a life. It’s not about texting and sitting playing computer games in solitude, it’s about face-to-face talking and interacting and socialising. There is a time for groups of the same age to get together, but they cannot escape that there are times where interactions with both younger and older generations are necessary if they want to learn. Language is an art. It has helped us all grow and develop through the ages. It should therefore be respected, well learned and well used - not well abused.
From Mr David Woodward
Business Marketing and Management Consultant in Dubai
Poll results:
Is it socially detrimental for teenagers to be on social apps such as Instagram and Snapchat?
Yes 47%
No 27%
Not if it’s properly monitored 27%
