Social media is a great way to communicate with the youth and to advertise services to them. It can be controversial whether social media is good or bad for young people. However, the fact is that they will be interacting with social media daily in their lives. That can be used as a tool to reach them.
As children grow into teenagers, their will to get more independent and might even rebel against their parents. Therefore, parents might not be able to express their guidance and rules might be broken. Teenagers might think that their parents are trying to control them too much and they need to make their own decisions, not realizing they might be too young to make important decisions by themselves.
Therefore it might be better to use social media to educate and influence the youth, since they will all reach the content and might have a discussion about it. So it might be more fruitful for them to reach the content themselves and think about it. This way it doesn’t seem so controlling to the teenager. Instead, they can ponder and get to decide for themselves.
In my opinion, the best platform to reach the youth and decrease bullying would be Tiktok. According to my experience, young people use Instagram mostly to post and react to their friends, Snapchat to communicate and Tiktok to scroll. In Tiktok, you can follow people, but mostly your “For You Page” will be filled with all kinds of videos you might be interested in or that are going viral.
If I could create a short, memorable video in Tiktok to influence the youth and create discussion about bullying, I believe it would help the youth to ponder it. Some might even get courage to get help or stand up for themselves, which would decrease the impact of bullying remarkably.
In my opinion, the youth shouldn’t be controlled too much. We should give them a chance to ponder and discuss themselves, so that the ideas and decisions seem to be their own and not their parents. However, they still need a lot of guidance, respecting their independence.
Great point! Social media can be a powerful tool to guide and influence youth in a positive way.
ReplyDeleteIm doubtful whether social media can be used as an effective tool to reduce bullying, but this is still interesting and it should be given a try
ReplyDeleteI also think that simple things as posting a tiktok video about bullying could be a great way to get the youth to ponder about bullying!
ReplyDeleteExcellent point—social media, when used right, can really inspire and guide the younger generation.
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