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Imagine you are sitting in front of the computer looking at twitter or other social media sites. You are reading comments that are being posted by other teens talking about your physical appearance and they are making fun of you. These comments are very rude and hurtful to you. Then you look on the internet or the T.V. and see models for certain stores and notice how perfect they are. It starts to make you think about how you want to be just like them and look the same so hopefully all the mean comments you were getting will stop and people will finally accept you as being cool and popular. Many teens today have a lot of these thoughts going through their head on a daily basis. They want to change themselves rather then embracing who they are and accepting how they look. I argue that this is the main cause of why teens have mental instability and want to change their appearances. Teens should reduce the amount of social media they use because it causes negative effects ranging from depression and self-esteem issues to more physical effects such as eating disorders and wanting to change their body because of dissatisfaction.

Popular source #1: Heath: Social media affects the teens, tween’s physical and mental health

This source is one of my additional popular sources. It is an article that interviews parents and how they monitor their kids use of social media sites. The connection between kids many years ago and kids today are talked about. Also it talks about their heath and how being in front of computers and phones is making things way worse. I chose to use this artcle because it covered a heath topic that was not discussed in other articles.

http://www.thegazette.com/subject/life/health-social-media-affects-the-teens-tweens-physical-and-mental-health-20150226

Popular source #2: How the media affects teens and young adults

This article breaks down the different ways in which it affects teens. It talks about the different sections separately and describes how they affects the teens. The sections are school, obesity, advertising and commercials, stereotypes, violence, sexuality, and gives tips on how to use social media safely.

http://www.pamf.org/teen/life/bodyimage/media.html

Scholarly source #1:The impact of social media on children, adolescents, and families.

This article talks about how social media impacts the teens. It states that the communication skills have gone up because of social media, but negative affects are more common because are peer-pressured into doing things that they normally would not do in person. The article talks about how kids now and days are being harassed and bullied and are getting into sexting as well.

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/127/4/800

Scholarly source #2: Children,Adolescents, and the Media

This articles talks about the percentages of teens who are involves in social media and texting. It talks about how their parents do not have rules on the issue either. Using social media opens teens up to the use of drugs, sex and violence. On the other hand this articles lists some of the positive effects from social media and T.V. as well.

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/132/5/958

I think that the best journal that I would publish my research argument in would be in Pursuit. This is because it covers the topics about sciences and that is what my research question is about. I chose this journal because it best covers my topic of research where all the others had specific categories like forms of english or communication. Pursuit was the closest journal to my topic so that is why i chose it.

http://trace.tennessee.edu/pursuit/about.html

Hailey Richardson

English 1020

Corey Hamiliton

1 November 2015

I-Search Essay

Social media has created this one image that is thought of as perfect. It has impacted our society in a good way, but it has also created bigger issues. Today young girls and boys are the ones that are being affected the most because they are the most vulnerable. This is a growing issue today that has major long term problems. Social media sites have pushed young girls and boys to think that perfect is being skinny and having a thigh gap or having to be toned and very muscular.. We all know that that is not true, but it is etched in the heads of young men and women today.  Since this is such a big issue with our society, it makes me want to look into it deeper and fully understand how this happens. I want to be able to know the reasons why some teens think this way and what pushes them to want to become that way. I hope to look more in depth on the issue and understand the question about how today’s media affects young girls and boys and how they view and change themselves and why.

I know a little about this problem and how it can affect young teenagers and how they want to change themselves. There are many problems that come from this. First, eating disorders in out society have gone up over the years. They are starving themselves so they can be skinny and look just like the models on Twitter and also seen on T.V. This affects them physically and mentally. Not just does it affect their body, but it creates problems with their mental health. They can go into depression and have low self esteem. The social media sites can also cause problems with how others treat them. If they are getting bullied on how they look that will make them mentally unstable and could lead to other issues concerning their health. Throughout this paper I am going to be exploring the details behind the issues with teens and explain my research process and how I got my findings.

During my research process I was able to find some articles concerning the ideas about young men and women and how they are affected by social media. Using the browser Google Scholar, I researched the idea behind the affects of social media on teens and why they think the way they do. I was able to find articles and works from stronger sources such as doctors and people who know a lot about the mind and body. This article is more important than articles just found on google like a blog. One of the pieces I found was from a website that is concerned about the child’s mind. This is one of my popular sources for the paper. Looking deeper into this article it will help me to understand somethings about how children and teens think and expand on the ideas about what causes them to want to change themselves. This article looks into the effects on kids and how they are acting because of social media. Many experts and doctors are saying that kids are having more anxiety and less self-esteem as they grow up. One of the ideas talked about in the article was the idea about how social media and texting are causing a loss of social skills. Dr. Catherine Steiner-Adair states, “There’s no question kids are missing out on very critical social skills. In a way, texting and online communication-it’s not like it creates a nonverbal learning disability, but it puts everybody at a nonverbal disabled context, where body language, facial expression, and even the smallest kinds of vocal reactions are rendered invisible.” (Child Mind Institute) This article is going to help me understand a little more about what causes teens to think this way. The work digs deeper into explaining how teenagers react to cyber bullying and since they are so involved with social media that they are never really by themselves since we are consistantly updating the world on what they are doing with their lives. So this article sums up the back story on what leads the teens to want to change themselves.

My second article that I found for my topic is called Cosmetic Surgery and Teens. This is a scholarly piece of work that I found through the Wayne State Library website. The main words that I used for my search was Effects of Social Media on Teens. I used an advanced search that really narrowed down my choices of articles. I looked through the articles provided and read a few articles that popped up and this is one that stuck out to me and I really think it will be a great help into looking more at the effects of social media. This article was written by MD Cynthia Elliott. After reading this article I was able to find some information that will help me move forward into answering my research question. This work talks about how teens are very concerned with their physical appearances and are wanting to make a change about it. Many are looking to bigger things than just starving themselves. Teens are wanting to get plastic surgery to reconstruct their bodies. The main reason kids are choosing to do this is because of social media, but many people think that teens might not really fully understand the results of making these choices. I also found that along with surgery, doctors were also performing nonsurgical works that were not causing as much controversy. This article is going to help me a lot with looking into my research question. It explains what the teens are turning to in order to change their physical appearances. Along with that it talks about how the brain is not fully developed as a teen or young adult. That could be another reason why girls and boys are so vulnerable and want to change themselves.

The last article that I am going to use for my research is a popular source that I found on the internet. When searching for this article I used the search engine google and typed in “ Effects of social media on teens”. After looking through the choices that were provided I did not really like any of the articles. So I re-opened my browser and typed in how does social media affect teens. While scrolling through the different articles and reading some of the information provided in each one, the article from BBC News seemed like a good source. This online piece was written by a health reporter named Philippa Roxby. This is an article that talks to a primary source that was affected by social media. She was a young girl that was bullied in school. The article talks about how Facebook causes kids to have low self-esteem and not have any confidence. This also feeds onto the previous article talking about cosmetic surgeries. a piece from this work states, “The MPs’ report said pressure to look good had pushed up cosmetic surgery rates by nearly 20% since 2008” (Roxby). It also shows what people are attempting to do to try and stop kids from feeling this way. They are setting up mentoring programs that go to schools and talk to teens about their body confidence and what they can do to make their issues better. I will find a lot of benefits from this piece of work. It will help me to better understand the back story of someone who was bullied about their physical appearance. The girl who is the main person being interviewed describes deeply how she was hurt emotionally about the things said to me. My knowledge is going to be opened up to see it from their point of view and I am going to further the ideas of my research topic.

My first source is from a website that looks into the development of teens as they grow up and how social media affects their anxiety and self-esteem. I used google and searched the effects of social media on teens and this article from the child mind institute came up. It talks about kids occupying themselves with technology all the time and cyber bullying is becoming a bigger issue because kids will say whatever they want over media and that will cause major effects on certain teens.

http://www.childmind.org/en/posts/articles/2013-11-26-self-esteem-and-anxiety-digital-age

My second source was from the academic onefile and it talks about the effects of Facebook and other media on body dissatisfaction. This was more of an experiment conducted by first year female college students. It shows what they did and how the media affected them. I went onto the Wayne State library and searched in the academic onefile. My key words I used were effects of social media on teenage girls. I read different articles and this one stood out because it was an experiment that has statistics about self esteem and body image satisfaction after it was conducted.

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA420580000&v=2.1&u=lom_waynesu&it=r&p=AONE&sw=w

I-Search Essay Introduction

Social media has created this one image that is thought of as perfect. It has impacted our society in a good way, but it has also created bigger issues. Today young girls and boys are the ones that are being affected the most because they are the most vulnerable. This is a growing issue today that has major long term problems. I know a little about this problem and how it can affect young girls and how they want to change themselves. Social media sites have pushed young girls to think that perfect is being skinny and having a thigh gap. We all know that that is not true, but it is etched in the heads of young girls today. There are many problems that come from this. First, eating disorders in out society have gone up over the years. Girls are starving themselves so they can be skinny and look just like the models on Twitter and also seen on T.V. This affect them physically and mentally. Not just does it affect their body, but it creates problems  with their mental health. They can go into depression and have low self esteem. Since this is such a big issue with our society, it makes me want to look into it deeper and fully understand how this happens. I want to be able to know the reasons why some girls think this way and what pushes them to want to become that way. I hope to look more in depth on the issue and understand the question about how today’s media affects young girls and how they view and change themselves and why better.

Question: How does today’s media affect young girls and how they view and change themselves and why?

This is written as a question but could be clarified a little. The work view could be changed so that the audience understands that the change is not just physical.

It will help me get a better understanding on how young girls think and why their mind thinks that way. This is such a big problem with girls today and I want to learn more about it and why.

I would need a set of diverse questions to get different ideas and takes on what and why this happens to young girls. This cannot be explained very easily, but needs detailed research.

This question is specific enough but not to narrow where I won’t be able to find evidence on it.