IS SOCIAL MEDIA CONCERN EXAGGERATED?

Social media refers to a grouping or collection of online platforms where many people have the
capability to interact and socialize hence sharing mutual interests, ideas, experiences, lifestyle
and various aspects of life. Since its inception in the early 2000s it has expanded immensely
with the likes of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat amongst others. According to Kelly Quinn, “the
use of social media has become ubiquitous, with 73% of all U.S. adults(putting Africa aside for
now) using social network sites today and significantly higher levels of use among young adults
and females."
Many parents and school administrations especially in developing countries in for this parameter, Africa
have a negative or rather constrained perception of idea of adopting social media amongst their ranks
or groupings, and this later spills into their children or students.
To a larger extent, the concerns of the parent and school administrations concern are very much
exaggerated and rather not justified because of the following points that are but a summary of the many
points that can cement my stance, a they include:  The constraints on social media from these parents and school administration provide, a large
barrier in terms of exposure to the world. Social media is a global platform for a lot of
socialization and interaction that is taken to a global scale because of this media, hence because
of this, many children and students are blocked off from the outside world and unable to learn
very many things from ideas, experiences and life stories from all over the world  With the ideology of social media being a social hazard in the 21St century, very many parents
and schools have created a hurdle to technological developments in mostly Africa in such a way
that the children or youth are left unprepared for the digitalised world because of the sheilding
that very many African institutes have imposed on the youth hence creating a gap in the road to
technological enhancement of which social media plays a critical role in.  The negative perception of parental and school administration towards social media in a youth
is rather a stereotype and not one based on viable fact or series of research. This rather archaic
ideology on this technology is one that cannot be justified by just unstable beliefs or perceptions
that don’t narrow down on what exactly the adverse effects are without causing a debate.  Education, social media has a lot of benefits for the students and teachers. It is very easy to
educate from others who are experts and professionals via the social media. You can follow
anyone to learn from him/her and enhance your knowledge about any field. Regardless of your
location and education background you can educate yourself, without paying for it and with the
out of proportion worries towards social media from parents and schools it has become a bottle
neck towards enhancing education to a more technologically compatible way.
(www.techmaish.com)  In many cases very many of the youth use the social media platform for very noble causes, take
into consideration of the affairs in Uganda, many of the youth with lots of assistance from
Global bodies, NGOs were able to use platforms like Facebook and Twitter to mobilize and
create awareness on issues concerning the gross abuse of human rights whose rates had sky-
rocketed over the last four months or so. This is but a glimpse into the many noble causes that