Social media has become an easy platform to build friendships all across the world, where not only people are making new friends, but are weighing their friendships on the basis of likes and comments. Keeping in mind likes and comments, teenagers are deciding as to who should they become friends with and who should they stay away from.
With this, 50% of the teenagers in the USA are facing increased stress levels, out of whom 30% are males. Research named ‘Project zero’ has been conducted by the Harvard Graduate School of Education, which has found out that the will of making new friends among teenagers has augmented, and as a result, they get stressed if one of their classmates gets more likes and comments on a social media post. Many a times, the teenagers’ feelings get hurt because of a sensitive post as well.
Along with this, the building of new friendships with strangers on social media is making them forget the real essence of true friendship in the real life.
In the light of this situation, it is important that if teenagers appear to be stressed out due to their social media friendships, their parents talk to them and counsel them. The teenagers have to be taught to come out of the virtual world and parents have to make them fathom the real meaning of friendships and the real way to value them; that is when children will be able to understand what friendships actually are and will be able to make good and true friends.