Knowles M., Lee S. H., O’Riordan M., and Lazebnik R. (2014).  Risk of Social Media for Teens in an Urban Setting. Global Pediatric Health 1-4. 

Introduction:

Researchers view how social media has taken part in an adolescent’s life and how this might be a risky thing for young people depending on the way they are using the internet and what type of activities they use on their devices. 

Method:

Researchers surveyed adolescents from an urban clinic at an academic center from ages 13 – 21. The survey Asked for their age, sex, grade in school, about their use of social media, if they met people from social media sights in person, topics they viewed online. Only 114 adolescents agreed to participate. 

Results:

The results showed that 66% of the participants were female and 47% were less than 16 years old. 93% of the participants were part of Social media. The most used social media by these participants were Facebook and Twitter. Adolescents involved in more school activities were more likely to meet people they met from the internet in person. 55% of the participants met with unknown people that they met online. 

Discussion:

Teens access the internet and social media via smartphones, The lack of supervision of parents when their kids are using the smartphones is causing adolescents to be involved in risky social media like activities. Most of the kids that meet with people they don’t know from social media are involved in school and after-school clubs and during this time of no parents around they take the time to do this. Parents cant really keep up with adolescents’ social media use because there is always a change in social media and because parents might lack the use of social media.