Teens and Internet Moral Panics Technology has become an essential part of the everyday lives of people. Social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are becoming a popular trend and young teenagers are introduced to a world of interaction through technology. However, many parents have become wary of the effects social media has on their children’s behavior. Teenagers are susceptible to various types of content portrayed through social media. To many parent’s social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are moral panics that cause teenagers to behave against the norm in society. A moral panic is “a condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests”
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It becomes difficult for parents to control what their kids can and cannot see. For example, the different content shared by other people and what their children post. During the period in which teenagers are already vulnerable, “exposure to age-inappropriate content is another serious risk because it causes much damage to an age-group that is already prone to sexual uncertainty and uncommitted and possibly unsafe sexual exploration” (Ramasubbu). Seeing inappropriate images on Instagram leads young girls to mirror themselves in the same way which eventually leads them to experimenting in the sexual world. Through the persona they create on Instagram or other social media sites they make a certain brand for themselves. When teenage girls post provocative pictures online “it makes a twisted kind of sense that girls- exposed from the earliest age to sexualized images- are promoting their online selves with sex” (Sales). Thus, this gives parents the validation that the reason their children are beginning to explore their sexuality at a young age is because of the sexualized content they see and post through the …show more content…
Stepping into a world where everything is new and unfamiliar, parents begin to worry about what their children are exposed to. This panic over how young girls interact through the media and how they are represented is not something new. Even before the media, women have hotly been contested about the way they are represented in society. Throughout decades’ society has constructed a line between masculinity and femininity when it comes to sexuality. What is appropriate for women and what is not. The idea that social media is the reason for young girls to explore their sexuality is just a justification to cover up the fact that women and sexuality has always been tainted. Social media has not raised panic for teenagers and their sexuality, society has done that long before technology has come into
It becomes difficult for parents to control what their kids can and cannot see. For example, the different content shared by other people and what their children post. During the period in which teenagers are already vulnerable, “exposure to age-inappropriate content is another serious risk because it causes much damage to an age-group that is already prone to sexual uncertainty and uncommitted and possibly unsafe sexual exploration” (Ramasubbu). Seeing inappropriate images on Instagram leads young girls to mirror themselves in the same way which eventually leads them to experimenting in the sexual world. Through the persona they create on Instagram or other social media sites they make a certain brand for themselves. When teenage girls post provocative pictures online “it makes a twisted kind of sense that girls- exposed from the earliest age to sexualized images- are promoting their online selves with sex” (Sales). Thus, this gives parents the validation that the reason their children are beginning to explore their sexuality at a young age is because of the sexualized content they see and post through the …show more content…
Stepping into a world where everything is new and unfamiliar, parents begin to worry about what their children are exposed to. This panic over how young girls interact through the media and how they are represented is not something new. Even before the media, women have hotly been contested about the way they are represented in society. Throughout decades’ society has constructed a line between masculinity and femininity when it comes to sexuality. What is appropriate for women and what is not. The idea that social media is the reason for young girls to explore their sexuality is just a justification to cover up the fact that women and sexuality has always been tainted. Social media has not raised panic for teenagers and their sexuality, society has done that long before technology has come into