Social Media’s Growing Impact on Society, Essay Example

Social media has drastically changed the way that people interact with their environment. Prior to extensive use of the Internet and related applications, friends, family members, and strangers had a more difficult time communicating with one another, making it more difficult to establish and continue existing connections. However, social media has completed erased this difficulty, allowing people to communicate with the touch of a button. Furthermore, with the advent of smartphones, conversations can occur anywhere. While this connectivity has many benefits, such as connecting people with similar interests, contacting old friends, and allowing people to communicate with others in foreign nations, there are many negatives associated with social media use as well. In particular, cyberbullying has become prevalent due to the availability of information about the victim in addition to the ability for the bully to keep in contact with their target at all times. As a result, it is apparent that social media promotes violence and it is important for find ways to police cyberbullying activities to people from being harmed as a consequence of this negative behavior.

Cyberbullying is a prevalent problem among school-aged children today. There have been many news reports regarding this abuse and in extreme situations, some students have taken their lives because they felt that they could not cope with such abuse. Furthermore, social media has allowed students to coordinate attacks, which has resulted in increasing violence. Law enforcement agencies have grown concerned about cyberbullying because there are few ways for them to intervene until the violence has occurred. In many cases, an intervention is possible only after it’s too late. Therefore, it is important to persuade parents to become more aware of their children’s involvement on social media and to talk to their children about their online activity. Parents act as a first line defense to protect their children and have an enhanced knowledge of when negative online behavior could result in physical harm. Thus, parents can be recruited as an important ally in making the school and social media experience safer.

I elected to focus on this topic because while cyberbullying as it pertains to social media use is problematic, there are many ways that the community could collaborate to reduce its ability to harm our youth. As a student in the criminal justice program, I believe that community involvement is a necessary first step in ensuring that the population remains safe. Cyberbullying is preventable, but parents must know the signs of abuse to understand how to properly care for their child and support them through this trouble. It is important to focus on cyberbullying through social media because it is becoming an increasingly prevalent issue. Many children who are bullied feel that they have no one to turn to and are unable to take matters into their own hands, which contributes to physical harm and mental anxiety. This problem ultimately contributes to their diminished ability to make friends in addition to resulting in lower performance in school, which traps them in an endless cycle of depression and lack of self-confidence. It is therefore important for local law enforcement to provide parents with education programs that will help them recognize these signs of abuse, so that they and local officers could collaborate to put cyberbullying to an end.