Why you shouldn’t expose kids to social early on

Social media originated as a way for people to connect with family and friends, even if they were thousands of miles apart. But over the years, it has transformed. Now, social media is used in a variety of different ways and a lot more frequently. Teens and young adults use it as a virtual scrapbook to document every detail of their life as they are living it. In many ways, social media has enriched our lives by connecting and inspiring people. But there are the flip sides as well, especially when it comes to kids. Here is why you should be cautious about exposing your little ones to these online socialising platforms.  

Decreases attention span 
Social media exposes kids to short-length content. The character limit of a Twitter post is 280, while Instagram allows only 1-minute videos followed by Tiktok where the length of a video is only 30 seconds.  All viral content takes merely seconds to consume and even for that children have started running out of patience. If something doesn’t grab their attention in the first five seconds, they simply scroll away, reveals various studies. This has severely reduced children’s ability to focus on one thing at a time for any prolonged length of time. 

Increases the risk of mental health  
The importance of social media in the broadening of peer relations and connection has some serious impact on the minds of youngsters. They have difficulty self-regulating screen-time which only increases the risk of developing mental health issues. Social media makes them vulnerable to peer pressure, cyber-bullying and sexual harassment from peers and strangers alike. It can lead to depression, anxiety and sleep deprivation in teens and cause them to develop communication issues. 

Triggers behvioural problems  
Recent studies indicate that excessive social media use not only exposes kids to cyberbullying, but those who use these platforms indiscriminately, often have attitudes, thoughts, and behaviours that mimic those of an addict. The thought of not being able to check their social media accounts causes some to break out in a cold sweat. They get nervous and anxious. Studies have also found that people who spend more time on social media display a deficit in decision-making skills which is often associated with drug addiction as well as a gambling addiction. 

Can lead to self-image issues 
People only post on social media all the happy times in their lives, their achievements and their good days. This creates an image in the mind of teenagers that everybody around them is living a good life and the incongruence in their own personal life to what they consider the normal trend of happiness causes them to become self-conscious. Not only that, social media also pushes also twists their sense of beauty taking it to the level of impracticality, leading to body image issues.