To experience the innocent, happy and carefree life back when we were a child was such a wonderful phase in our lives. Carolyn Haywood, an American writer and an illustrator from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, also thought the same, as revealed by Scholastic.
"Children are not only innocent and curious but also optimistic and joyful and essentially happy. They are, in short, everything adults wish they could be", Haywood shared. With all the stress our world has, it is inevitable for us adults to wish to turn back time and be able to feel such contented life once again.
But, did you know that being a kid at present isn't the same as what we had before? Kids nowadays are now more exposed to risks and dangers, which could negatively affect and shorten their life big time-all these can be blamed with the misuse of social media.
"Social media is killing kids", emphasized by Collin Kartchner, the founder of Save The Kids. Due to the current situation, he shared his ideas with Preston and the West Side school districts encouraging people to open up their eyes in facing such social issues.
Nowadays, the rise of several social media sites such as Instagram, Facebook, WeChat, WhatsApp, QZone, Twitter, and Tumblr are unfolding right in front of our very eyes. Aside from it can be used as a medium by predators to abuse children, there are still other ways social media is negatively impacting our today's children. By misusing social media platforms, our today's children are slowly becoming more and more emotionally unstable.
Recent statistics revealed how a quarter of young women in the US are experiencing pressure due to their social media accounts and their followers' expectations to become perfect, the suicide rate among teens has dramatically increased since 2010, and some teen suicide deaths were recorded just because of parents taking their children's phones. Furthermore, some figures also revealed one out of four kids in Utah opened up how lonely they were causing them to consider to commit suicide and the increasing rate of exposure to pornography among these youths.
Kartchner further claims how misusing and getting addicted to social media "robs them [the youths] of the ability to feel real connections". This eventually discourages them to become resilient, which could result in more negative emotions towards themselves and to their abilities, as reported by The Preston Citizen. Through his efforts, Katchner aims to open the eyes of more parents regarding the dangers of social media and encourage them to come up with ideas, which could limit their kid's usage of it.
