Dear Ms Samantha Taylor,

I’ve just finished reading your article regarding teenagers and their social lives involving social media. I partially believe in a few aspects the authors have raised, but in others I see things through a different perspective. For example on how teenagers would act, change character or even alter their attitude after a few simple texts. From my own eyes, I have witnessed adults are also glued to their smartphones more than teenagers and I don’t think it’s work related. Facebook and Twitter are only some of the social networking sites they ‘bangout’(overuse something) in teenager terms. Adults often over exaggerate issues and problems, which seem unimportant. I know teenagers are our main focus, because they are our next generation who could change the world depending on what type of person they are.  Continuous negative messages and reports like this one brings the morale of teenagers down.

Only if Franzen, Louis CK, Greenfield and yourself were in our shoes you would understand our point of view.

On the other hand I agree with the next point Frazen has raised relating to the weakening of teenager relationships, because too much social media causes them to be shy of talking to people in face to face. At the same time there are plenty of teens who have great capacity of communicating and using social media for a period of time doesn’t affect them in any sort of manner. This could be, because they go out a lot so experience is on their side. Others is due to natural characteristics of a person that is over-confident.

In the past adults didn’t have technology at their disposal and that’s why they might not relate to it as much as teenagers. Technology was basically brought up in the era of the teenagers meaning access was greater and lifestyle in England has improved dramatically resulting in the millions and millions of sales in technology.   Furthermore a variety of adjectives are used to describe teenagers and a tremendous amount of them are quite harsh like ‘digital teenagers’ as many students have a healthy and active lifestyle.  Teens need to be treated like adults giving them responsibility and not thinking we are more than them, for example barging in front of them and giving them dirty looks in public transport. We can see a fall in many of teenagers’ academical results and these are the students we see are over using social media and basing their life on it which for me is logically incorrect, this is where the motivation, inspiration of parents, teachers and peers come in. These so called ‘enslaved social inadequates’ need their heads lifted up to reality and explain the consequences of social media and the long-term effects, so they are not endangered by social media.

I believe that some of the information written by adults is sometimes too quick to judge, because as a teenager and relating with them I don’t see inappropriate behaviour, they might be performing actions but in a way which doesn’t harm anyone and it’s normally to demonstrate something to their friends. An experience that I have seen is a group of school boys on their way home and they had their hoods up because it was raining but every stranger that walked past seemed afraid of them and gave them dirty looks.

Speaking from my perspective I see a vast majority of teens behaviour appropriately, only communicating with people they know.

Nowadays these recent social media sites are all secured and hacking isn’t a problem. I believe that many people who have these sites like Facebook have privacy lockings and we can only see people’s information  if you’re a friend with them, but they have to accept the friend request first. An example of a teacher that posted misogynistic things on Facebook ended up losing his job. He was constantly posting up pictures and writing things that offended women and he got caught out. Safety is something in our society that is worrying and that has caught my attention to, similarly adults expose vital information of themselves as well. Is it adults causing the bad habits and presenting wrong ideas to teenagers?

Concluding teenagers need to be looked on the positive side and if help is needed then our human instinct is there to help them. We can look to them as young adults and actions speak louder than words. Teenagers need to be incentivised, motivated and inspired.

This subject is very controversial and the negatives need to be improved.

Your sincerely,

William Domingues