What do teenagers spend a majority of their free time doing today? The answer to this question is most likely wasting time looking at pictures on Instagram, tweeting on Twitter, or posting a status on Facebook. If one were to ask this simple question ten or even just five short years ago the answers would be completely different, perhaps such as playing a pick of game of basketball, going to the mall with friends, or maybe even reading a good book. Most of todays generation of teenagers is entirely too wrapped up in the craze of all the different social networking sites being developed "[i]n fact, 95% of adolescents are connected to the Internet" (Nixon 143). It has become a major competition among the peers to see who can get the most likes on picture or the most retweets on a tweet. Most of the teenagers are so consumed into the social media world that they do not see any of the dangers or negative effects that it can possess. Although social media can have a few positive effects, teenagers should have tighter restrictions and regulations on how much social media usage they are allowed to have per day, because social media can present a serious threat from other people using these websites, teens can also be a danger to one's own self, and the amount of time teenagers spend on social media can have many negative effects.
Social media can be an extremely dangerous threat to teenagers from some of the other people using the social networking sites. Cyberbullying has become a major epidemic among teens today. There are many different forms of cyberbullying, such as ".sending harassing messages (via text or Internet), posting disparaging comments on a social networking site, posting humiliating pictures, or threatening/intimidating someone electronically" (Nixon 143). In January of 2014, a fourteen-year-old boy of Ohio named Matthew Homyk took his life because of the awful effects of cyberbullying (Dickey 40).
