Teen Technology: Benefits, Risks, Consequences, and Solution

Teenagers are major users of new technology, including internet, smartphones, tablets, portable media players and other tools offering the opportunity for one-click access to the internet. Teenagers from all over of the world have largely integrated these new technologies in their daily life. The technology they use has benefits and risks both. These risks can take the form of serious consequences all of which are listed below. There is also a solution available to cope with the risks and consequences of teen technology.

Benefits

Rapid access to educational information, ability to stay connected, earning the livelihood, finding jobs, setting up businesses online and the ease to exchange ideas and experiences are a few of the benefits of technology.

In the field of education and learning, the internet represents a unique and valuable source of information for all teens. Teens stimulate their curiosity and take help from research resources such as Google or Yahoo, encyclopedic tools, Wikipedia, and YouTube offered video archiving to prepare the presentations or documents for them. It is a proved fact that the moderate use of the Internet brings more favorable academic progression, compared to a non-use or excessive use.

The internet is also a valuable way of socialization. Teens become part of social networks to stay connected with friends and to interact with like-minded people to exchange ideas, not only locally, but beyond the borders. Furthermore, technology opens new ways for teens to earn money. The do online businesses, blogging and what not to earn a handsome amount for them.

Risks

Technology has everything good and bad. Beyond the positive aspects of technology, there are a number of risks that should be taken into account. The risks include the cyberbullying, violence induced games, openness to information in the field of health, drugs or sex, the use of invalid information, and much more.

Teenagers are taken as a target online by some of their peers or older adolescents and are confronted regularly with derogatory comments or threats. This can cause serious psychological issues in your teen. Next comes the behavioral issue that elicits from the frequent use of violence-induced games. In addition to that, teens grasp the information they find on the web without digging into the source of information they spreads the wrong information all across the web. Technology also poses a serious threat to the well-being of your teens. The majority of teens become part of social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, and then share sensitive and private information without thinking about the consequences. The exchange of erotic images, obscenities, personal information and much more shows their inability to discriminate between private and public information. This can eventually lead the teens to face potentially dangerous situations, including sextortion, deception, loverboy games, groomers, exposure to pornography sites and drug related information etc.

Consequences

Teens keep their technology close to their heart and hands. Excessive use of the gadgets can not only make them tech addicted, but can also cause serious health related issues in them.

The technology addiction is a is widely discussed topic. Indeed, a number of teenagers, sometimes very early, are caught in tech addictive behaviors and that can result in vision-related problems, sleep deprivation, neck strain, hearing loss, cardiovascular disease, anxiety, and depression.

Solutions

An open and interactive monitoring of the parents is a good solution to avoid risks and prevent the consequences of teen technology. Parents should take an active interest in their teens’ technology use. Once the teens become the prey of technology, you can use it as a counter tool to help your teen. You can take help from the parental Control apps in this regard.