Internet’s Adverse Effects on Teenagers Essay

Adverse Effects of Internet on Teenagers: Introduction: The use of internet has grown tremendously among the teenagers over the last few decades. This has largely been caused by a variety of reasons such as education and the need for entertainment. The internet provides a variety of free information and resources that can either build or destroy the life of a teenager. As a result, many teenagers have ended destroyed morally and psychologically due to excessive use of the internet for the wrong reasons. As a matter of fact, research shows that many teenagers get excessively addicted to the internet from the first time they gain access information in the web (Kraut ; Kiesler, 49-74). The growing and excessive use of the internet among the teenagers has also largely been influenced by the affordability and availability of internet both at school and home. This continued use of internet by the teenagers has tremendously affected the teenagers adversely with time. To be precise, most teenagers who have excessively use internet have continued to have problems academically, socially and even morally. Background Information: Research indicates that in every ten teenagers, nine are regular internet users. According to statistics, 87% of the teenagers in the Western World aged between 12 and 17 are regular users of the internet. 51% of these teenagers visit the internet on regular basis. This actually represents about 21 million teenagers who visit the internet. It has also been found that 81% of the teenage internet users basically use the internet for playing video games. This percentage represents about 17 million teenagers (McKenna ; Green, 9-31). The figures above are a direct indication that there is an overwhelming increase in the number of teenagers accessing the internet over the last few years. This information implies that most teenagers are therefore openly vulnerable to some of the evil practices that go on over the internet. As a result, the society has continued to bring up teenagers who are morally corrupt. Refutation: It is important to note at this point that most teenagers are quickly getting addicted to internet use. Most teenagers get addicted to the internet because of the following reasons: First, most teenagers believe that the internet is the best source of entertainment. There are many internet sites that provide free games of that the teenagers can play. Most teenagers therefore visit these sites and spend quite a lot of time playing those games. The teenagers find fulfillment in these games and therefore dedicate much time to play such games. The addiction to internet games by the teenagers has largely been encouraged by lack of enough co-curriculum activities in the schools in the current society. With the current globalization, most schools tend to focus more on impartation of academic knowledge to the teenagers paying less attention to other extra-curriculum activities that are important for the mental development of the teenagers. This has therefore left the teenagers seeking for alternate sources of entertainment which they easily find over the internet. These teenagers have therefore grown to believe that the internet is the best source of entertainment. This is absolutely wrong since the internet games ideally promote the culture of selfishness because it gives the teenager a chance to find solace and fulfillment in the machine. This makes the teenagers to become selfish even as they grow up. Secondly, most teenagers believe that the internet is the best source of informant for academic research. Whenever the teenagers are given class assignments to do, the first research source they run to is the internet. This is because they believe that the internet provides accurate and ready information that can help them to quickly complete their assignments. As a result, many teenagers have been become so addicted to the internet for academic purposes. However, the teenagers need to understand that taking academic materials and reproducing information from the internet can often to academic frauds like plagiarism. The teenagers therefore need to be careful in conducting their research over the internet due to the crime risks they expose themselves to. As a matter of fact, the teenagers need to seek alternate sources of information such as books, journal articles and newspaper articles in conducting their research. This will help them to get information that they fully trust because it is easy to verify the sources of information from books and journal articles. Lastly, most teenagers believe that the internet is the best form of communication. This is because of the various technologies for communication that are actually provided over the internet. Most teenagers tend to lack cellular phones for communication. This gives them the option of communication technologies such as email and chat sessions in different applications over the internet. Through such technologies the teenagers get a chance to effectively communicate with their friends. This has made them believe that the internet is the best source of information since they can easily share their issues with friends over the internet. This is however wrong and should be discouraged. Proper socialization can only be healthy through physically contacting someone. Electronic communication through the internet reduces the relational skills of the teenagers and therefore makes them vulnerable to becoming irresponsible and selfish adults when they grow up. It is important to have good social skills which can only be enhanced through physical relationship (Lee ; Kuo, 7) Supporting Arguments: Internet use has adverse effects on the teenagers because of the following reasons: Internet expose the teenagers to Internet Crimes against Children. The internet is one of the platforms through which predators tend to find teenagers and grooming them for criminal activities such as the production and distribution of children pornography, stalking and contacting the teenagers for sexual acts engagement and even exploitation through sexual tourism. Most of the criminals tend to look at teenagers as perfect targets for achieving their criminal motives. This is mainly because most teenagers tend to be naive, trusting, adventurers, curious and seeking attention as well as affection. This, therefore, makes the teenager so vulnerable to being victims of such kind of criminal acts over the internet. In addition, the criminal acts could turn the teenagers into criminals too especially when there are monetary benefits attached to it. Secondly, the internet has the ability to corrupt the good morals of the teenagers. The internet provides quite a lot of free information and services that have the capacity of corrupting the good morals of teenagers. Illicit and immoral information such as pornography can easily become objects of admiration of teenagers over the internet. It is important to note that most teenagers tend to be at the peek of adolescence whereby they enjoy all manner of new things and are very curious to adventure into things. Due to peer pressure and pressure from their physical bodies, the teenagers are most likely to get addicted internet pornography. Accessing such illicit and immoral information can therefore corrupt their innocent minds. This information is dangerous because it can easily transform them into criminals such as rapists. Anytime the teenagers access the illicit information over the internet, they tend to develop the desire to practice what they read and watch over the internet. As a result, such kinds of teenagers end up not concentrating in their academic work and so scoring poor grades in school. Some also drop out school as they turn out to be frequent law offenders (Handbook of child psychology, 1-101).