Friends and social networks – HopeMedia Italia

Real or virtual? What are the risks of the race for social approval? It may be better to rethink the conscious use of ever-evolving technology.

Flaviu Teresneu – “I’m 14 years old and I’m tired of social networks” (Riley Jackson, young American actress. – editor’s note). Many children measure their popularity by the number of followers, friends or likes on social media, which can affect self-esteem.
Riley remembers the evening when he decided to log onto Snapchat, one of the most popular social networks of the time. She opened the Snapchat story of one of her closest friends and discovered that her entire group had met without her. Maybe they thought he was out of town? The pain was unbearable.

“The most important thing for me,” Riley comments, “is the hope that I can balance the best of social media with the real world, and make sure that instead of worrying about what I don’t enough, I can make the most of it.” Every moment I have, I live.”

It’s easy to think that having more friends online will make us feel better. However, a list of thousands of friends, likes or followers does not guarantee that we will have someone to turn to when we are alone, frustrated or really need a friend. “Talking” on a screen to people we barely know does not replace real relationships or create a real sense of belonging.

The influence of social networks on friendship

Friendship and peer approval are crucial during adolescence. In 2018, Pew Research Center, surveyed 743 teenagers aged 13 to 17 years over a two-month period, and the results on the relationship between social networks and friendship were as expected.

About 81% of teens say social media helps them feel more connected to what’s going on in their friends’ lives. What’s more, two-thirds say these platforms make them feel like they have people who will support them during difficult times.

Research shows the difference between social media friends and real friends. 60% of teens say they spend time with their friends online every or almost every day. But only 24% spend time with friends outside of school.

Big question
Is it possible that this discrepancy between our expectations of the happiness we experience online and reality is causing us to feel more anxious and depressed? This is one of the most controversial issues about teen technology use, with research showing mixed results.

Some experts believe that the constant overstimulation of social media use triggers a fight-or-flight response in the nervous system. As a result, conditions such as ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), teenage depression and anxiety tend to worsen. In addition to this, the frequency of social media use is inversely related to the mental health of adolescents.

Children ages 14 to 17 who used social media seven hours a day were more than twice as likely to be diagnosed with depression, see a psychiatrist, or receive treatment for behavioral problems in the past year, according to a 2018 study. compared to those who used social media for about an hour a day.

Actress Kate Winslet said on this issue: “It has a huge impact on the self-esteem of young women because all they do is design, design themselves to please people. What will come of this? Eating disorders. And it makes my blood boil. And that’s why we don’t have social media at home.”

Snapchat “strips”.
Most social media apps come and go, remaining in the minds of users for a short time and then disappearing to be replaced by the next trend. Snapchat is constantly evolving to avoid this trajectory and is doing everything it can to keep users interested, be it new daily filters, trophies, or what appears to be the network’s most successful innovation, Snapchat Streaks (Snapchat, ed.). This feature tracks consecutive days that people communicated through the app. Snapchat stripes

it’s essentially a number next to the username.

On the Drake University campus, the average number of contacts among high school and college students was 390 consecutive days. Liz Bregenzer and Anna Jensen, two students, spent more than 1,000 consecutive days on Snapchat. They say it’s important to keep up because it would be terrible to lose such a defining record. And they don’t have to do much to support it: Snapchat is more like a text messaging app, Bregenzer says. Although opinions vary, most Snapchat users love the fact that they can express their emotions and actions much more clearly than through text messages.

Freshman Zoe Dittmar also has a long list of Snapchat views: more than 1,000. He believes that for many young people, Snapchat is simply an easier way to meet other people, and that the app allows for much shorter conversations than other messaging systems .

However, not everyone understands the reason for the outrage caused Snapchat stripes, and some are convinced that it encourages a kind of meaningless communication. “I never saw Snapchat as an important part of using social media due to the almost forced nature of the app. Just taking pictures of faces and having small conversations without any real reason doesn’t make sense to me,” comments Anna Neidermayer, a freshman at Drake University. “These streaks have become a feature of Snapchat, and I think they reinforce the idea that it’s important to maintain a certain image. social image, a certain number of consistent conversations and a certain number of notifications every day to feel good.”

Snapchat Streaks have gone viral on the app, but it is also a controversial topic. Many people wonder if texting is a good way of communication that will replace text messaging, or if it is a meaningless form of communication that is simply leading to increased dependence on technology.

The value of living away from the public eye
Right now, friends, famous people, and even people we don’t know are sharing their lives publicly with no regard for privacy and its implications. The ever-expanding universe of these platforms requires more thoughtful behavior, allowing us as users to determine how we want to interact with our friends and the online world. Otherwise, we risk allowing social media to define and potentially destroy our friendships.

“I just want people to see the work that I’m proud of. I feel like I let people touch me when I’m on Instagram or Twitter, and I don’t want to be touched all the time. I will not do it. Never” (Elizabeth Olsen, American actress)

(Source: street network. Translation: V. Addazio)