#5- The Cyberbullying Virus

     Cyberbullying is more common in today's society than you may think. About forty-two percent of teens are bullied online. This video below talks about cyber bullying as a virus which I think is a great analogy. Cyber bullying is like a virus that continues to spread and it is very harmful. Some teens are bullied so badly online that it causes them to commit suicide and there has been many cases of it.
     We heard the story back in October about Rebecca Sedwick, who killed herself because she was being tormented both on line and in person by two other classmates who were later arrested, ages 12 and 14. One of them later even took to facebook and posted "Yes IK I bullied REBECCA nd she killed her self but IDGAF." This is what goes on in our society today. People think they can just hide behind computers and bully people but they don't know the total effect it will cause the person. When people post mean things online, even if they're joking, it can be harmful.
      Like this video below says, we can do things to stop cyberbullying. Most younger kids aren't even aware that this goes on. We can step up and do our best to stop cyberbullying but fighting it off and make social media a nicer environment. The virus has to be stopped before it affects any more teens.

#4- Social Media Esteem

Do you know those people who in person are very quiet, shy, and insecure, but then online they seem to have a totally different personality? This is actually a common thing. People with low self esteem, use the internet as a place where they can recreate themselves by posting pictures of themselves that they make sure they look perfect in, or by posting statuses/tweeting things to make them feel cooler or by even talking to people they normally wouldn't talk to in person. Online you are able to control what people think of you by what you say and what pictures you upload.

On the other hand, people with high self esteem even use social media to gain more esteem. People are so concerned about how many likes they receive, and we can admit we all do this. Knowing that over 100 people liked your photo on instagram wouldn't make your self esteem lower right? It's not a bad thing and sometimes social media can actually reflect your identity. Sometimes social media can actually hurt your self esteem too. The comparison to other people, is what hurts us or not getting enough likes can make someone feel conscience. 

In this article I found here: http://www.medicaldaily.com/facebook-and-social-media-activity-reflects-self-esteem-study-finds-256832, they talk about how social media actually reflects one's self esteem in either a positive or negative way. Since everyone has the power to present themselves to the world online, what they post can explain a lot about them.

#3- Teens and Social Media

       I found this video online and I thought it was very interesting. It gave a lot of different information and statistics about teens and social media. It talked about how much time teenagers spend online and on social media websites. Teens waste too much time online and its a distraction from homework and other activities. I admit that I waste a lot of time checking social media sites and it take away a lot of my time that I could be doing other stuff. Also, the video discusses how much information teenagers post online. They post: their school, their town, their age, their pictures, etc. Their whole lives are just all over the internet. I personally think that we trust social media networks too much. We just assume that only our friends want to see our posts and all our information is safe but occasionally that isn't the case. the video shows that 42 percent of teens accept request from people they don't know. This is dangerous because they don't know these people and they could just be online predators who now have all your information and it's easy to track you down. Also, teens don't think about that all the stuff they post online can be looked up by colleges or possible jobs in the future and this can affect you. We can't let social media control our life as it seems it does in some cases. It's there to help us communicate with friends and get up  to date on whats going on and even to show our friends what we're doing but sometimes people take it too far by deciding to post their who lives all over the internet. We need to be careful about how much time we spend online and how what we post can affect us and even others.