Social Networking Is Affecting Youngsters & Making Them More Anxious

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Youngsters are among the worst affected by social media in the recent past. A recent survey conducted in the United Kingdom has found that use of social networking sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter is making youngsters more anxious and fearful.

Over 10,000 young people aged between 12-20 years who were taken into consideration for the survey. Of which 70 per cent of youngsters admitted to being abusive towards another person on social networks and 17 per cent claimed to have been bullied online.

According to the survey by anti-bullying charity Ditch the Label, 40 per cent participants felt bad if nobody liked their selfies and 35 per cent said their confidence was directly linked to the number of followers they had.

Instagram was highlighted as having become the vehicle used by most youngsters for posting mean comments. Seven per cent of young social network users said they had been bullied on the Facebook-owned photo app.

On the other hand nearly half (47 per cent) said they would not discuss bad things in their lives on social media and many offered only an edited version of their lives.

"There is a trend towards people augmenting their personalities online and not showing the reality," said Ditch the Label's chief executive Liam Hackett. "Cyber-bullying continues to be one of the biggest challenges facing young people," said Hackett.

However, on the contrary, a recent research from the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) suggested cyber- bullying was relatively rare. The research had taken into consideration youngsters who were around 15-year-olds. 30 per cent of these youngsters reported regular bullying and only three per cent said it happened both off and online.

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