Effects of Social Media on Teen’s Self-Esteem and Dignity

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Do social media sites affect your teen’s self-esteem? Use the kid safety app to mitigate the risk of online applications.

Today’s parents have to deal with hyper-connected kids and nurture them with due care. 

Likes, Selfies, Emojis, Stories, Check-ins, and whatnot! There are numerous social media facets that are hard to manage and harder to understand. When parents make their teens understand the impact of media apps, most of the time, they ignore and remain active in their virtual life. Its addiction affects teen’s self-esteem.

Hence, parents should take the kid’s social media activity thoughtfully. Child monitoring app comes in rescue to protect the dignity of your kids.

Let us check the influence of interactive media on a child’s overall health:

Teens and Newsfeed on Social Networking Applications:

From Facebook to Instagram to Snapchat, people have a habit of sharing their life’s highlights. It depicts the perfect and flawless life of an individual – parties are a daily routine, babies are always smiling and never bothering parents at midnight, everyone is fit and following their diet, and many more things. 

It’s hard for teens to accept the gen that whatever is portrayed in the newsfeed is not the indicator of their real life. People share their best-filtered photos or videos to grab the viewer’s attention, and it has nothing to do with reality.

When teens view posts on online communication websites, they feel like they don’t measure up. They compare themselves with peers and friends and feel inferior. Children underestimate themselves and end up in terrible situations like depression, fret, lower self-confidence, etc.

According to CBSN, “when we are living in a social media culture where every moment is exhibited publicly, shame and embarrassment are the most difficult things for anyone to handle.”

Now, let’s move towards the most threatening impact of online networking platforms i.e., cyberbullying.

Cyberbullying:

The prominent reason for teen’s lower self-esteem is online harassment.

Cyberbullying takes place on the digital platform using social media portals as a medium to post rumors, abusive stories, victim’s personal information, etc. Here, victims will experience a variety of negative emotions that includes frustration, dejection, agitation, and they can even think of suicide in extreme cases!

Cyber harassment takes many forms like:

  • Fails or ignores to comment and hit the like on someone else’s stories, posts, or newsfeed.
  • Negative comments on someone’s images-selfies, caste, religion, hobbies, or appearance.
  • Sends provoking messages
  • Posts rumors or lies about the victim
  • Gradually evoke a victim to commit a suicide

Certain games, social media trends, and competitions can also hurt teen’s morale. For example, if your kid asking you, ‘Am I looking pretty or ugly?’ 

Once a 13-year-old teen had posted a video, and someone commented – to commit suicide. Reading this comment, that boy was so upset that he asked his parents if such people exist that could make heartbreaking comments.

Thus, online bullying leads to lower self-esteem, and that lower self-esteem leads to severe health issues, poor academic performance, and criminal behavior.

How to Uplift Teen’s Self- Esteem?

  • Appreciate the child’s remarkable work:

Give a pat on kids back when they do an outstanding job. Do take note of their decision-making skills and encourage their own judgment. And, explain them not to rely on the second opinion. Celebrate small achievements of kids.

  • Create a positive environment and talk to your teens:

Parents need to build self-confidence in teens, and for that, they need to remain calm. Don’t scream or punish yourself for any professional or personal task (not in front of kids at least). Talk with them about their goals in life and help them achieve it. Boost the morale of kids to achieve their dreams.  

  • Participate in teen’s online activities:

Participate in kid’s digital tasks like sending friend requests and checking their posts. Make them understand that involving in their online activities isn’t for invading their privacy, but protecting them from digital dangers.

  • Be approachable:

Encourage your child to share the things that upset or frighten them with you. Demonstrate and introduce them to the positive side of social media and teach them to indulge with good people and stay away from stalkers.  

  • Set the cyberspace guidelines:

Reliable parental controls will help to limit internet access on a kid’s device. Few predefined guidelines will be useful, which includes:

  • Screen time control app enables parents to set the curfew hours on multiple applications so children can get limited time to spend on apps.
  • App blocker tool is helpful to block inappropriate applications.
  • App Install Blocker prevents children from downloading any new apps in the virtual world so they can focus on other priorities and balance real-life relationships.
  • Call Blocker blocks the suspected and spam callers on the child’s device.
  • GPS tracker locates kids’ whereabouts, allows to define Geofence boundary and notifies parents about their speed limit.
  • Anti-Theft finds the lost device and offers the Reset Factory tool.
  • Panic and SOS tool helps kids during emergencies and much more.

Child monitoring applications are the need of the hour to combat the social media effect on teen’s dignity. So, don’t let your child lose the battle, bring their blissful life back with kid safety application.

Download one of the well-known Android parental control software – Bit Guardian Parental Control today!