This is the 3rd show in the Children of Courage Series, called Impact of Social Media! In this episode, teens offer their take on SOCIAL MEDIA!

Yeah, there’s a lot to unpack there! On the one hand, there are so many POSITIVE elements about these social platforms, whether it’s TikTok, Instagram, or Facebook, to name a few. There are some 1) Really creative people who we can be inspired by, 2) knowledgeable people who we can learn from, and 3) even professional people who can lead us to job opportunities, 4) and all of these amazing opportunities can be reached on a global scale! Clearly, social media is a useful tool, but there's a dark side to it, too, and, I think, it’s something that is worth examining, especially when it comes to young people.

These days social media is the landscape of our social lives. We can’t escape the magnitude of its influence on our social, psychological, and emotional lives. It has a very unforgiving and relentless nature. What I mean is when a rumor or story is spread over social media, it doesn’t matter whether it’s the truth or a lie. It’s like wildfire! When it catches, it spreads over hundreds to thousands to millions of people very fast and it is really devastating, whether it’s positive or negative, for the people involved. I say even a positive story can be devastating because of the sudden massive scale of the consequences. Even if you’re just an observer of social media stories, you can’t escape the psychological and emotional impact of them. What happens is that people pick sides in social conversations or situations. Because we all need validation, we tend to follow what’s popular more than because we really believe in something. Because social media thrives on popularity, most people on social media, and especially teens, are NOT using the platforms as a way to reflect in ANY MEANINGFUL WAY. It’s become a platform for shaming people into “groupthink” to create a population of followers. This is especially devastating for teens because we really are just learning who we are and about all the things that’ll help us to develop our backbone—our values—in life! Imagine that our view of ourselves is contingent on what other people think of us. Then, who are we really living for??? Does a teen really develop a sense of SELF or a sense of HOW TO BE SOMEONE ELSE through social media?

I really wanted to find out what the prevailing perspective of social media was for teens— positive tool or dangerous social experiment. I hope that these interviews are enlightening. Most importantly, I hope they help kids develop their OWN POINTS OF VIEW!