Should Parents Limit Children’s Use of Social Media?

Should Parents Limit Children’s Use of Social Media?
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Should Parents Limit Children’s Use of Social Media?
The unrestricted use of social media by children in the United States and around the world leads to a range of adverse effects to their well-being. Parents should intervene and put up restrictive measures to protect their children from the harmful effects of unlimited use of social media. Children born in the current generation of advanced technology start using digital devices at a very young age for different purposes. The use of social media among American children is unbelievably high due to the availability internet connectivity and digital appliances for accessing such media. The availability of digital devices such as smartphones through which children access the various social media platforms and the autonomy of use enjoyed by kids around the world puts them at risk of succumbing to the side effects of unrestricted use of social media. Securing the future of the young generation demands a parent-oriented approach and interventional measures in monitoring and regulating the use of social media by children. Among the proposed measures for regulating children’s use of social media includes parents’ active involvement in restricting or rather limiting their children’s use of social media. Nevertheless, parents’ involvement in protecting the children against the negative effects of unlimited use of social media elicits diverse views and opinions on whether or not parent should limit their children’s use of social media. A comprehensive analysis of the effects of unrestricted use of social media to children serve to support the active role of parents in limiting the children’s use of social media. Unregulated children’s access to social media has been proved to lead to adverse physiological or health effects, poor social skills and challenges socializing in real word and the cyber environment has become a hunting ground for sexual predators.
Spending too much time in social media exposes children to adverse physiological or health effects. First, most digital devices emit blue light which affects eyes. It kills some retinal cells and the users’ eyesight begins to fail. Since popularity of social media is barely a decade old, long term exposure to the blue light due to continued staring of the digital devices’ screen are unknown. However, sine blue light has been proven to affect eyesight, the digital devices are likely to accelerate because social media sites are mainly accessed from personal devices which are highly portable hence longer exposure for users due to convenience of access. Social media is one of the risk factors for obesity among children stemming from the wide range of advertisements from business organizations dealing with fast foods. Children spend up to 9 hours in a day on social media where they view advertisement videos from various corporations CITATION Ame16 \l 1033 (American Academy of Pediatrics, 2016). Consequently, they develop unhealthy eating habits leading to obesity. Spending too much time on social media also makes children to become intolerant to physical exercises which further puts them at risk of ge...