Risks and Benefits of Social Media

Social networks are increasingly affecting society. Technology opens doors to a lot of information and provides information to almost everyone, anytime, anywhere. People check their e-mails, update their status on Facebook, send tweets, instant messages, text messages on Twitter. Discussions on whether the use of social networks is negative or positive is ongoing. In the case of Steven Pinker, his article "Mind over Mass Media" believes that media technology has a positive influence on intellectual development.

As with most technologies, the use of social media by teenagers has potential advantages and risks. These platforms help young people talk to each other, communicate with each other, find opportunities for learning, and engage in an important career for them. Social media also offers rich information and resources that teenagers can use to maintain health and human relationships. On the other hand, young people in social media are at risk of bullying and other attacks, contact with inappropriate content and predators, and public provision of their personal information. There is also some evidence that the regular use of social media may be related to depression and other mental health problems.

Social media has a potential advantage. Potential risks of social media are often at the forefront of being open and anxious and attracting the community's attention. I am worried about these issues, but I need to realize that social media has become a reality. Encourage educators to understand how social media can help to prevent and respond to critical risks. For example, you can use social media to solve the following problems. To get additional information on how to respond to an event, consider using a smartphone app in critical situations. Many critical applications already exist (eg FEMA - http://www.fema.gov/app; Psychological First Aid Mobile (NCTSN) - http://www.nctsn.org/content/pfa -mobile; Psychological First Aid Tutorial (UMN) - http://sph.umn.edu/ce/perl/mobile/pfatutorial/; NIMS ICS Guide: NIMS Application - https://itunes.apple.com/app/app / nims-ics-guide / Id 406880725? MT = 8)

In addition to application design and family guides, social media labs are constantly looking for new ways to educate young people on the risks and benefits of social media. Children often learn about media literacy and appropriate online behavior at school, but often they can not practice these skills until they are in cyberspace of adult content or adult content. To fill this gap in education, the lab develops a new tool called social media TestDrive. TestDrive acts as a social media simulator that enables children to practice privacy management, post appropriate postings, and communicate with others. However, instead of interacting with other potentially unknown people on the open internet, children interact with "robots" that act and respond in a realistic way, or pre-programmed simulated "users". Each TestDrive user is divided into its own site instances, so their actions can not drive them to "real world".