GREAT FALLS — It's no secret that the internet is all around us. It's also a well-known fact that social media has become more and more popular, with an increasing amount of users each day.
Is this a good sign, or a bad sign?
That was the question during a public discussion held at Great Falls College-MSU, where Adam Dodge, Founder and CEO of EndTAB (End Technology Enabled Abuse) discusses the impacts of teenagers being exposed to online content.
"I'm not here to say that all technology is inherently evil," Dodge said. "It's a tool. When people misuse that tool to cause harm, we sort of end up where we are right now, where people are consistently using new and existing emerging technologies to engage in unhealthy behaviors or abusive behaviors online.”
The Pew Research Center’s 2018 survey of teens showed that one in six teenagers have experienced at least one of six different forms of abusive behavior online:
- Name-calling (42%)
- Spreading false rumors (32%)
- Receiving unsolicited explicit images (25%)
- Having their activities and whereabouts tracked by someone other than a parent (21%)
- Someone making physical threats (16%)
- Having explicit images of them shared without their consent (7%)
Dodge discussed the potential effects that social media has on adolescents.
"What's happening is there are a lot of familiar adolescent challenges, self-esteem, bullying, fear of missing out, body image, all of those challenges become amplified as a result of social media, hyper-connectivity and just exposure to all these things in ways that we’ve never seen in a 24-hour cycle, and so what we know is in the near term, it’s affecting youth mental health to the point where the surgeon general says we have a national youth mental health crisis. How that’s going to work out long-term remains to be seen, but we know that in the near term, it has become a huge problem and a huge challenge for kids and for parents.”
Dodge noted that while it is important for parents to have conversations with their kids and educate them about the potential risks of being exposed to online content, kids themselves should also be aware of what they come across. The ways to do that is to treat online as you would the real world, such as not talking to strangers, not engaging in activities that can lead to harm, along with not exposing yourself or another person to explicit content.
To learn more about EndTAB, click here: https://endtab.org/
