Rising Drug Addiction Influence Of Social Media

A whole lot of credit goes to social media as it has connected people and abolished distances. No doubt it has brought people of different worlds together raising love and humanity in them for each other. The positivity of idea behind social networking cannot be disclaimed. It has truly contributed towards the swiftness of contacting and getting in touch with others. Unfortunately, on the other hand it has spoiled the forthcoming generation. Social media dangers for kids to set their trend towards drug addiction in the following ways.

Effect of drug temptation images on the youth

Seeing pictures of people taking drugs, one gets somehow attracted to the idea those people are presenting. Pictures showing relief and satisfaction while doing such a dangerous and life killing action, the drug addicts even provoke the uninterested ones to plunge in the sea of death and misery. And that ultimately leads to the number of increasing population of such miserable people. This whole scenario is very poisoning for the teens of the present and of-course, the future. These young minds have no idea how these useless addiction of theirs can bring them to a ruin that is impossible to be recovered.

Exposure of drug related activities of celebrities

One of the major roles played in promoting drugs is by the famous and well-known figures which do not hesitate to expose themselves taking drugs. And in turn, that has an adverse effect on the tender minds of the teens which get themselves to drug addiction following the footsteps of those celebrities. The disastrous  action of such celebrities is ironically a big threat towards the future of our generation.

Race of getting 'thumbs up' and praises on social media

As for teens, another dilemma lies in getting more and more fame on social media spreading in youth. Teens are getting habitual of craving for the attention of opposite gender. And for that purpose, they show their interest in this crap i.e drugs. By showing their relation with drugs they are much publicized and become more eminent in the competition of getting more likes, comments, tweets and fan-following. And that's not all. When the teens don't get such hugely expected response from their social media fellows, thoughts of underratedness and inferiority begin to germinate in and ultimately destroy their minds.

An overlook of some researchers' studies

This firm relationship between drug addiction and social media cannot be denied. Following are some studies related to the subject.

- 75% of the teens of U.S admitted that they got used to taking drugs by getting an influence from their friends' images with drugs.

- Those teenagers who consume greater time on social networking most often become drug addicts, as per survey by National Center on Addiction And Substance Abuse (CASA).

- As per David Tran's studies, almost 66% of the youth under his research disclosed the fact that seeing drug related stuff on social media urged in them a headstrong desire of taking drugs.

So, it's undoubtedly necessary to wipe out the accounts of such teens who arouse others to get into this life threatening act by showing off their addiction with drugs. The management teams of social media should stop neglecting this ponderous issue. Otherwise, the loss will be irreparable.

Is Your Child an Internet Troll?

The problem with our new generation is that everything the so requires it very own manual for the parents to understand what they have been doing. They go LOL instead of actually laughing out loud and say BRB when they’re going to be right back. Even the idea of taking to someone later has been abbreviated to TTYL.

With such terms in the mix it is already pretty hard for a parent to understand what their child has been doing and has been up to at any given time on the cyberspace. With that being said, it is also quite hard for a parent to determine if their child is an internet troll or not.

Who is an Internet Troll?

An internet troll is a person that, more often than not, hides himself or herself behind the cloak of a sockpuppet account and uses the internet to spread hate. Such posts made by such individuals sow the seeds of discord with their words and make people argue with each other. They post inflammatory messages on online chat communities and blogs and upset people by writing racist comments about people from different parts of the world, stereotyping them and calling them names.

Psychological Mindset of a Troll

According to many surveys and researches conducted in the year 2013 and 2014, the year trolls took to the internet to spread hate speech, it has been found that people who usually troll the internet tend to possess various dark personality traits which may range from antisocial behavior to sadism to psychopathy.

These individuals take pleasure and feel good about themselves by hurting other people, much like a sadist who enjoys sexual gratification by hurting their partners in a number of ways. Similarly, these individuals also tend to be quite antisocial, using internet to voice all the nefarious intentions and cruelty bubbling inside themselves and since they cannot let go of their demons by being themselves, they invent sockpuppet personality that is usually accepted by a general group of people for their for the purpose of punishing them or maybe to relieve their loneliness.

Furthermore, these people could be the real world equivalent to the Joker in the Batman series. The Joker is a certified psychopath and since the world and the way it works doesn’t make any sense to him or her, the set out to fix it in the way they think is right and while doing that such individuals promote hate and hurt on various social media outlets.

Ultimately, the main reason for a troll to do all that he or she does is to gain a reaction. For such an individual any sort of a reaction would do – positive or negative, it doesn’t matter. As long as it riles people up and get them doing the things they wouldn’t have normally done. They are your basic tricksters, trying to get a reaction out of you by being pesky as hell.

What Role Parents Play Here?

As mentioned above, parents these days no longer have the time to keep up with their children and the fast paced world that they live in. Thus, more often than not parents make the mistake of trusting their children too much and not paying any heed to whatever they are doing online or offline. Due to this ignorant attitude of parents, children that are mentally unstable, with unadulterated access to internet turn towards trolling and bully and harass innocent people online. By doing this, while your child is not physically harming anyone, he or she is doing a number on his or her psyche which makes it very important for parents to keep an eye on their children.

Since they are unable to physically monitor their children, what such parents can do is consider investing in parental monitoring applications. These apps can help them in not only keeping a close and very keep digital eye on their children wherever they may be, it is also the perfect medium through which parents can learn whether their children are internet trolls and get them the help that they may need.

The Bottom Line

It is hard being a parent and learning that your child may be an internet troll, when you thought they didn’t have a mean bone in their body. Still, once you have discovered the terrible affliction your child has soon enough, you can work towards helping them so that they can put their trolling tendencies at rest and be good and contributing individuals in the society.

How to Bypass Social Media Dangers for Kids?

Are you aware that your teen is on the verge of getting dangerous effects from social media? If you don't believe, dig deep into the digital devices of your teens and find out what they do. The vast popularity of social media is attracting the teens as well to register communicate with anonymous users. The social media forums are the favorite places of cyber bullies while your teens are also over there. Got it? If not, check out our infographic and don't turn deaf ears to what's going on in the lives of your teens. Spy them through monitoring applications and put all suspicions to rest.

 Infographic source: TheOneSpy

How to monitor the social media activities of your child

A study was recently conducted on the impact of social media on children and families. Findings of the study were released by the American Academy of Pediatrics which suggested that while actual benefits do exist for children when they make use of social media for instance having increased communication, having access to information and being able to develop a sense of self, there are disadvantages as well. They also suggested some guidelines and tips which parents should keep into consideration with respect to social media use and its impact on their children.

 

1. Make sure that your child is 13 years of age or older before he signs up for Facebook: while this is the age limit set by the site, there is no way it can actually prove whether or not a user is actually above the age limit which is why as a parent, it is your duty to ensure your child doesn’t join the site till he is above the age limit.
2. Make sure that appropriate privacy settings are in place: this should apply not only to the social media websites which are being used by to the browsers itself. Depending on which browser you are making use of, ensure that the right settings have been activated to ensure that your child’s internet browsing session is a safe and secured one.
3. Make use of a filtering/monitoring software: there are a number of such software’s available through which you can keep track of the websites your child has visited, for how long and even what keys were typed. Such information can help you understand what your child does while making use of the internet.
4. Set rules: if your child is old enough to be using the computer on his own, he should also be aware that rules exist and that they should be followed. Make sure to enforce these rules and be strict about your child following them. If he/she doesn’t, feel free to take away their privileges till they understand the importance of rules.
5. If everyone shares the same computer at home, make sure it is in a central location. This is helpful as it prevents any sort of suspicious behavior from taking place and will also ensure that your child doesn’t visit inappropriate websites or anything of the sort as everything would be out in the open.
6. Children like to post pictures of themselves online and share it with their friends. If your child is doing so, make sure you are aware of the kind of pictures and content he/she is sharing. Make sure it is appropriate prior to it being published on social media.
7. Make sure you set a good example: children tend to follow the behavior of their parents a lot of times and if you tend to check your emails or social media while driving or if you text while you drive, you’re certainly not setting a good example for your child and chances are, they will behave similarly so make sure to fix your habits as well.
8. Limit their use of the internet: make sure that your child has a set amount of time for which they can use the internet.
9. Talk to them about the dangers of the internet. They need to be aware of what is out there and how to keep themselves safe. Create a relationship with them which makes them feel that they can approach you regarding anything and stick to your promise of helping them out.

Keeping employees honest using monitoring software – An employer advice

A remote web developer at Coalition Technologies happened to spend a lot of his time watching movies on his work computer; little did he know that the company’s software was watching his moves. Coalition is an online marketing and design firm which makes use of ActivTrak which is a software to monitor their employees’ use of the internet on company owned computers. This company is amongst the many that are now beginning to make use of monitoring software’s to monitor the internet activity of their employees

The software gave Coalition a report about the computer use of the web developer in question and also revealed the reason behind why his latest projects which had been submitted, had been late. The employee who was aware of the monitoring software being in place was later fired from his job due to his inability to improve upon his performance.

Considering such an example, employers perhaps do have a good reason to be monitoring their employees and making use of a web monitoring software. A survey conducted in 2014 by Salary.com showed that 42% out of 750 respondents stated that the activity which wasted their time most at work was doing things online. 26% of them said browsing the internet, 12% stated responding to emails and 4% stated that social media is what caused them to waste their time at work.

In yet another 2014 survey which was conducted by the Human Capital Institute, it was found that 65% of companies now have a policy for blocking sites at work and 60% of them said that it had been an effective measure to take as it helped in getting rid of any workplace distractions.

Despite the use of such employee monitoring software increases performance, the topic does raise concerns for those who are advocates of civil liberty at the workplace. According to the president of National Work-rights Institute, Lewis Maltby, internet monitoring has now become a trend which is growing and software’s for this purpose are being made use of by a number of employers. He also states that it could be a major setback in terms of the privacy of employees since a lot of times; workplace computers are also made use of for personal searches which may be associated with illness, disease or problems with children or one’s marriage.

Coalition Technologies makes use of ActivTrak to see the screen shots of activities on computers which are used by around 30 of its employees out of a total of 73. All that is required is that a manager selects a date, clicks on “go” and the software will show him every screen shot of the computer used by an employee for that particular date. Thus the software is pretty useful and can even provide the list of websites which an employee visited and for how long he was on the site. This is possible since the software runs in the background while the computer continues to operate and is in no way, intrusive. What businesses should keep in mind however is that soon enough, it will be difficult for them to find employees who don’t mind being micromanaged at all times.