Role of Social Networking Sites in the Lives of Contemporary Youth Essay

Role of Social Networking Sites in the Lives of Contemporary Youth - Essay Example As the report declares social networking sites are web-based software that allows people to create their profiles and add other individuals with whom they would wish to connect, share, and chat with especially in exchanging updates. Their main agenda is to promote socializing among individuals irrespective of their geographical and socio-cultural differences. In this age, children live in a mediated world where advanced technology forms the surrounding that allows them to gain access to the free flow of information and social network through sharing. This paper stresses that the introduction of social media has indeed changed many things in the ways people, especially children, relate to one another in that it has accentuated the socialization of children through a virtual platform. The social media in itself is a unique cultural system that has the ability to transform the already existing cultures especially in young children who are eager to learn new ideas without due consideration of their pros and cons. In the modern society, children including those less than sixteen years of age have fully embraced the use of major social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter in promoting their social agenda that varies from child to child. The main function of media is to inform, entertain, and educate, hence children undergo constant transformation in their cultures based on the prevailing trends in the social media, as most children, if not duly guided, do not have the capacity to filter social media content and only ingest the most useful ones. (Carmen 55). More often than not, contemporary children who are preoccupied by social networking sites, mainly Facebook and Twitter, tend to adopt new cultures as they interact with colleagues and individuals from multicultural backgrounds. Culture plays an important role in shaping the behaviors and character of children and therefore any external information that has cultural inclination deserves a meticulous approach (Doctorow,