For many of us growing up dreaming of having an object that connects us to the world didn't exist. The barrier of having only calls and text in intself was a powerful constraint when now kids grow up with online avators and stimulating interconnectivity. Kinds learn from interconnectivity and by expriencing the online world they don't recieve any real social skills. Content and media online can be very stimulating, that stepping of it and being with people may be less easy or interesting to them.

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There are several known effects that social media and the kind of media today has on kids, for example hurting sleep. Children in elementary school need between 10-11 hours of sleep in night in order to help mature towards adolencence, however by having stimulating colorful videos to watch and the ability to stay connected many only recieve 8 which hurts their development. Studies are not able to clearly distinct a correlation between social media use and the higher rate of depression in anxiety with young girls but there are speculations of this being in regards to the lack of appreciated sleep had in those ages these days.

 

Another way it's hurting kids is in their ability to develop focus. Focus is a muscle which needs to be developed, and when children aren't able to focus for a long time on a task they develop a habit of distraction. Children learn to not partake in hard tasks because they seek interruption to gain dopamine, which could potentially later on lead to consquential decision making with grander implications. If children start multitasking and playing a game with a friend while watching TV, they don't truely learn how to be present with taking part in social interactions and are perpetuating themselves to further distractions. If a kid is always handed an ipad at a resturaunt they will always associate that restaurant with the game they play or the object. They may become less able to eat without multitasking content and truely learn how to enjoy the little things in life, like the taste of a meal. There are people that struggle to take their focus offline which triggers the same part of their brain that lights up with partaking in drug addiction or alchohol addition, which could fuel cross dependacies to drown out one form of addiction. These all effect the way handling attention, emotion and decision making are effected. This is because social media effects the reward region of our brain, the brain rewires itself to desire more and more stimulation.

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Concider the kinds of things that are promoted in content, rarely will you see a Youtuber eat a well balanced meal and talk about their workout and homework. Instead there are videos like Mukbang that support bringing habits or videos like Logan Paul's that include filming dead bodies and hosting porn stars. In addition advertising content and commercial nearly always feature junk foods that may lead to obecity. 

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The dangeours of advirtising and product placement in content to kids is real. Kids at very young ages are still in an egocentric mindset where they struggle to understand people think differently than they do and so do the characters on TV. They often don't have the ability to critically think about media, because they lack the understanding that someone on the screen has an anterior motive. Additionally children don't understand concept like probability which only develop at early adolecense, so if they think a zombie apocolypse in Taiwon is happening because a TV show showed it they don't understand the concepts are fantasy not being real (the magic window) or that there is a probability factor (the Zombies are super far and probably won't reach your house). 

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Fantasy violence is another scary reality when dealing with kids, because children see roadrunner running and falling from a cliff, squishing and then going back to being normal. As the content evolves to become less about cartoons and more about things online, the variation of violence that is online becomes more staggering. Viewing more violent content as a child has been correlated to acting more violently and feeling less remorseful about it, so it's important to make sure what is being watched stays within the frame work of functioning in a healthy manner. 

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Media has a large effect on the way sex is percieved. Beyond the gender inforcing norms that the media inflicts, it creates a false reality in which it looks like everyone and anyone has an active sex life. Children struggle to merge between fantasy and reality and often will think that their real environment acts a lot like the media environment although it doesn't. This creates a lot of pressure on both girls and boys.

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Becoming selfish in conversations is another noticeable difference. When researching brain activity while people were on social media researchers found the people released a lot more dopamine when talking about their own views online rather then reading what someone wrote or listening to someone. While in real life interactions people will typically talk for 30%-40% of a conversation about ones own experiences, online communication is self involved 80% of the time. The same part of the brain that's connected to orgasms, motivation and love are stimulated by social media use and even more so when we have an audience. Our brain therefor is psychologically rewarding itself for talking about itself online.

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Social skills and dating 

 

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The Cringy Reality of Youtube Kids & Kids AI Videos

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There's also an important value in not directly signaling to kids that that is the right thing to do, if kids see a parent behave one way and say another they will always mimic the behaviour. So it's important to set an example of being mindful. 

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