Cyber Addiction Among Teens

Cyber Addiction Among Teens
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Cyber Addiction among Teens
The age between 13 and 19, commonly referred to as puberty, is a delicate yet crucial stage of development. Not only does the human body undergo some rapid physical and cognitive development, but also the teens, as the people in this age group are often referred to, get exposed to several external factors that might sway their vulnerable mindsets. Teen pregnancy, esteem issues, peer pressure, alcohol, and substance abuse are some of the most commonly acknowledged problems associated with teenage years. With the advent of the internet and other internetworking technologies that teenagers have access to, cyber addiction has come up as a tragic problem that teenagers face today.
It takes little or no time to realize how attached teenagers are to their mobile devices. Research has found out that on average, teenagers spent at least nine hours a day online, with a resounding sixty percent of the teens admitting to spending more of their time on the internet (Anderson, 2018). The fact that that attachment to mobile devices and online presence among teens can be equated to that of the use of drugs qualifies it as an addictive behavior (Lustig, 2017). The addiction to the internet and mobile devices has an unhealthy outcome on the development of teenagers, meriting it as one of the major problems facing young people in the contemporary era. Stress, social anxiety, and social class are the major driving forces towards internet addiction among this age group, implying that teens from different social classes have a varying degree of internet addiction (Feng et al., 2019). The tech companies have studied the minds of teens and designed products and services that may look more appealing and pleasing to teens of such limited cognitive development.
Several techniques to root out the social anxiety and stress factors that have pushed adolescents towards internet addiction have been put forward. Social anxie...