Young adults' reflections on their experiences of social media use during adolescence

Abstract

Social media use has become important in the lives of adolescents and plays a significant role in their daily lives. Social media sites, for example Facebook and Twitter, enable adolescents to form and maintain relationships with others as well as to become part of an online community. The research was qualitative in nature and formed part of a group research project. The study was exploratory in nature and the type of research was applied. The researcher made use of an instrumental case study design. Ten participants were selected by means of the purposive and snowball sampling methods. Data was collected from the participants by means of semi-structured interviews. The researcher interviewed participants between the ages of 19 and 25 who provided their perceptions of their social media use while they were adolescents between the ages of 11 and 18. The research conducted showed that adolescent social media use had both positive and negative influences on their lives; the influences varied depending on what they used social media for. These influences had an effect on various spheres of their lives as well as on their relationships. The influences, whether it be positive or negative or both, also depended on the quality of the relationship that the adolescent had with his/her parent(s). From the research study it became clear that most young adults interviewed had been exposed to negative experiences in their use of social media. They did not recommend social media as a safe platform for adolescents as there are many risk factors as well as possible dangers that an adolescent could unknowingly be exposed to. During the study it became evident that adolescents who use social media are not aware of the risk factors involved in the use of social media. This is possibly due to a lack of parental involvement in their adolescents’ social media use as well as too little guidance from other significant adults in their lives, such as teachers and guardians. It was concluded that more research needs to be done with regards to the lack of parental involvement in adolescent social media use and that awareness needs to be created by social workers and other professionals regarding the effects of social media use in general, as well as to promote the involvement of parents in their adolescent children’s social media use.