It’s no question that social media is very popular amongst teens and young adults. Teens and young adults are being crowned the title as “digital natives” in today’s day and age. A digital native is described as “people who have grown up under the ubiquitous influence of the internet and other modern information technologies.”
Social media is a great tool to, in some cases, escape reality and interact with other posts on their homepage. It is also becoming the way in which teens and young adults are getting their news from rather than television. More and more teens are getting their news intake from social media studies have shown. Social media also has the potential to manipulate teens and to twist stories in the news.
When social media is not being used correctly and the user is not following the proper guideless, that can severely affect the victim in question. From USA Today Nia Whims, a Florida teen, was arrested for being wrongfully accused of making violent threats towards the school. Turns out, “an unnamed classmate created an Instagram account using her name and sent messages to herself threatening to blow up the school and kill multiple people, according to the lawsuit.”
Nia Whims is only a 13 year old girl being accused of a serious crime and also was arrested for the matter. Whims was so severely affected and traumatized by her unruly arrest, “the family is seeking $30,000 in damages, in part to get Nia treatment and counseling for the emotional and psychological effects of her arrest and detention”.
“She wasn’t there for Thanksgiving. She was heartbroken. She came home and she threw away her school uniform.”
Lezlie-Ann Davis, USA Today
Having disinformation being spread about someone on social media, especially as young as Whims, can be emotionally damaging and scarring.
It is made so easily to repost and or share news information straight from social media which often leads to come from an unreliable source. This news story also shows although it says it is someone’s account of social media, there can be carbon copies of that account or an account that got hacked into.
The spreading of misinformation can be dangerous and has the ability to influence a certain audience. Since we are currently in a pandemic, having information and health updates on COVID-19 is crucial to ensure our safety and those around us. There is misinformation that is being spread on different social media platforms that are easily influencing teens which is very damaging.
“Misinformation being spread onto social media has both and negative and harmful effect on teens and young adults: “A 2020 joint survey in the U.S. from Harvard, Northwestern, Rutgers, and Northeastern universities found that people under age 25 were more likely to believe in COVID-19 misinformation than older people, regardless of political affiliation”. Although both YouTube and Instagram are taking the necessary precautions to stop the spread of misinformation to reach their younger audience, TikTok was still having misinformation about the vaccine being shown unto other users’ pages and affecting their overall algorithm.
Teens and young adults have grown up with the newest of technology and it is one of the few tools that adults go to them for advice on how to operate in the digital age. Although the younger generation have the knowledge and experience with this technology, they are definitely not experts on how to navigate through misinformation and disinformation on social media.
Of course with the pandemic, the time of social media significantly increased in teens: “A survey of 60,000 families from the parental control app Qustodio found that in March and April 2020, during lockdowns, kids spent an average of 97 minutes a day on YouTube, 95 minutes on TikTok, and 60 minutes on Instagram”. The amount of views and the amount of likes that are on a certain post also has an impact on teens and how they will interact with and interpret the information that is being shown.
“Teens also might be absorbing false information simply because of what scientists call the illusory truth effect, which is a tendency to believe false information if you hear it multiple times.” This is a tactic used in media manipulation for specifically teens to have them believe the information they are being fed is the one and only truth knowing they are an easily influenced crowd.
Question for you. If you heard the same information over and over on multiple different platforms and through your peers and those who you trust, wouldn’t you slowly start to believe it for yourself?
Journalism 2.0 