What a time to be alive, where social media is much more popular than enjoying the outside world. Today, teenagers put so much time and effort into their social media profiles that it becomes ridiculous. "The Teens Social Media-Trap" article written by Jennifer Breheny Wallace on May 4th, 2018, focuses on the outcomes of these social apps that affect teens, in majority girls.
Girls, being, sadly, very insecure of themselves from the start, tend to resort to these apps to find some validation on how they are, how they look, etc. They compare their likes, their views, their tags, the quality of their picture, what exactly is in the picture, for what?
These apps, though very useful, tend to create a whole unrealistic idea in a teenagers mind that should not be there.
In this article it is also mentioned how there is the possibility to purchase online validation as well as followers, likes and views to increase these and of course, make the user seem as they're more popular or known in the social media app.
These secondary apps where you can purchase such things create so much money off of users who only seem to want the attention they seem to need. Businesses like these target teens in ads on social media feeds. As a 20 year old, if I compare my feed to the one of my little sister (who is 15), I can assure you an ad will more than likely pop up on her feed than it will on mine.
The target market for these apps is definitely one with a range age of 12 to 18 years old. Teens in this age gap are easily persuaded to purchase such in order to obtain an "acceptable" social status as it seems to be something normal in this century.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-teenage-social-media-trap-1525444767
Written by: Aimee Murillo
It's actually becoming an issue, we all tend to become self conscious and we also compare ourselves to other people who are equally insecure based on things we post. It is actually an issue as you said especially for younger teenage girls. Brings into question whether what these social media companies are doing is ethically correct. Only time will tell how technology will evolve.
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