By Fai and Karin

Social media is a big part of many teens’ lives. Almost all teenagers have social media to connect with other people. Social media can bring many benefits to its users in various aspects of life.

From now on, social media becomes a precious platform to grow and glow in public. First of all, being socially connected is very important for the psychological development, especially we all are in the pandemic era who hardly not allowed to do the things that we suppose to do. On the plus side, platforms like TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat can be lifesavers for teens who feel isolated. In addition, social media helped teens feel more connected and not as lonely during the pandemic.

For the most part, teens tend to use social media platforms to improve their trace. Even more, they use this platform to create a business, such as our alumnus in SMAN 3 Bandung, kang Ehan, he made kind of a milo cubes and earned about 1.2 million rupiah in a month. He used social media to publish the product. From that, people may know about him and what he had earned from using social media platforms, maybe some of them feel attracted to do the same things, and it could create a good atmosphere in media social.

Although social media can be a place for a teenager to grow, social media can also cause a feeling of insecurity in its users, because what is posted on social media is usually things like fun life, happiness, and so on without showing the slightest problem or daily struggle in their life. So that many users tend to compare their lives with someone’s life on social media, and there is also a tendency to make ourselves the greatest in order to show the best life on social media, regardless of the existing boundaries. As for social media, which has such rapid development, trends often appear that are not good enough to follow, and are difficult to filter out so that anyone, including teenagers, can follow.

To summarize, we think that social media could be pretty dangerous for ourselves, but it could be a diamond in the rough for growing up as a teengers. So we have to control ourselves on these big platforms.