Connections between individuals and their relationships are being pushed aside by the impact of social media and its attractiveness to teens. This means that teens are starting to communicate and rely more on connections via social media. For example, in my own experience, I have been trying to talk to someone in person and their focus is solely on their phone. Seeing as this behavior is slowly becoming the norm, it shows how negatively the impact of social media is on teens and their crippling real life relationships. What is on the phone comes off as more important to teens because they crave attention and feel as though social media outlets give them that attention because of how one can easily express themselves online. Consider this quote from Susan Greenfield: “The biological need, the conscious craving for personal expression and self disclosure could be key to what so many find compelling about Facebook and other types of cybersocializing” page 103, as an explanation as to why teens feel as though they need attention through expression. Teens aren’t being attention seekers or anything of that sort; they biology need attention in order to obtain a healthy upbringing. This ties in with what danah boyd is saying in the first chapter of her book “it’s complicated” . boyd emphasizes how much identity influences young teens, and is now influencing what they present on social media. It is getting more and more popular to create a fake account with wrong information about yourself than it is to present your regular self online. Thus, someone with a fake account who feels like they can’t be themselves in real life, they can create a whole new person online that feels more like how they feel they really are. boyd agrees with this way of expressing yourself when she said “ I felt ostracized and misunderstand at school, but online I could portray myself as the person that I wanted to be”. This is how so many people feel, and that is why teens prefer connecting online: they feel like the only place they are accepted and listened to is online. People need to listen and to care about their issues in real life because teens feel as if they don’t. That’s why they will turn to social media.

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