It is a true honor for me to be speaking at the opening ceremony of this most inspirational event, surrounded by so many bright and talented young students. And I would like to thank the Costeas Geitonas School for the kind invitation.
Held for the first time in 2006, the Costeas Geitonas MUN Conference has continuously developed and expanded ever since. It timidly began as a small-scale conference with few participants, and has progressively become one of the best-organized and most successful MUN conferences in Greece, attracting schools and participants from all over Greece and abroad. Students participating at the conference, broaden their views, deepen their thoughts and interact with students from all over the world. In other words, you are all very lucky to be here this weekend!
This year’s conference theme is Social Media. We live amidst an increasingly dense, technology-driven network of social interactions; a network connecting us to people, to information, to ideas, to events that altogether shape our understanding of the world surrounding us. In the last decade, technology has enabled an exponential growth of these social networks. Social media tools like Facebook and Twitter are engines of a massive communication system, a system in which a single idea can be shared with millions of people in an instant.
The figures are striking. I would like to share with you some statistics regarding the use of social media across Europe:
Out of 100 internet users in Western Europe, how many do you think use social media on a regular basis on average? 63,2%. The Netherlands, Italy, Norway and the UK have some of the highest rates of social network usage in Western Europe: at least 69% of internet users in each of these countries regularly visits social networks. By contrast, France and Germany rank lower in social media usage, with just 55% το 57% of internet users using social network platforms on a monthly basis. The discrepancy in the figures among countries is attributed to a variety of cultural and logistical reasons. For instance, in both France and Germany, we encounter a lower usage rate due to privacy concerns, reluctance to reveal personal information and mistrust of global online players such as Facebook and Google. And of course the demographics play their role as well. As you may know, Germany is an aging population with the lowest birth rate in Europe. An aging population is automatically more conservative and hence more reluctant to make use of social media. On the other hand, in countries like Italy and Spain that offer cheap data plans and fast internet speeds, the numbers of social media usage are higher. It is estimated that the monthly social networking site audience in Italy will reach this year 69% of Internet users.
SOCIAL MEDIA USE BY YOUTH
In a nutshell, social networking communities are here to stay. Engaging in various forms of social media is a routine activity that research has shown to benefit children and adolescents by enhancing communication, social connection, and even technical skills. Social media sites such as Facebook and MySpace offer multiple daily opportunities to connect with friends, classmates, and individuals with shared interests. According to a recent poll, 22% of teenagers log on to their favorite social media site more than 10 times a day, and more than half of adolescents log on to a social media site more than once a day. 75% of teenagers now own cell phones, and 25% use them for social media, 54% use them for texting, and 24% use them for instant messaging. What does all this mean? That a large part of this generation’s social and emotional development is occurring while on the Internet and on cell phones. So, there’s no doubt that young people are actively engaged in online communities, but what kind of effect is this online social interaction having on them and how can parents bolster the positive and counteract the bad?
BENEFITS OF CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS USING SOCIAL MEDIA
Socialization and Communication
Social media allow teens to accomplish online many of the tasks that are important to them offline: staying connected with friends and family, making new friends, sharing pictures, exchanging ideas. Social media participation can also offer adolescents deeper benefits that extend into their view of self, community, and the world, benefits such as:
Enhanced Learning Opportunities
Middle and high school students are using social media to connect with one another on homework and group projects. For example, Facebook and similar social media programs allow students to gather outside of class to collaborate and exchange ideas about assignments. Some schools successfully use blogs as teaching tools, which has the benefit of reinforcing language skills, written expression, and creativity.
RISKS OF YOUTH USING SOCIAL MEDIA
Using social media turns into a risk for adolescents more often than most adults realize. Most risks fall within the following categories: peer-to-peer; inappropriate content; lack of understanding of online privacy issues; and outside influences of third-party advertising groups.
Cyberbullying
Cyberbullying is deliberately using digital media to communicate false, embarrassing, or hostile information about another person. It is the most common online risk for all teens and it is a peer-to-peer risk. Cyberbullying can cause profound psychosocial outcomes including depression, anxiety, severe isolation, and, tragically, suicide.
Sexting
Sexting can be defined as “sending, receiving, or forwarding sexually explicit messages, photographs, or images via cell phone, computer, or other digital devices.” Many of these images become distributed rapidly via cell phones or the Internet. This phenomenon does occur among the teen population; a recent survey revealed that 20% of teens have sent or posted nude or seminude photographs or videos of themselves.
Facebook Depression
Researchers have proposed a new phenomenon called “Facebook depression,” defined as depression that develops when preteens and teens spend a great deal of time on social media sites, such as Facebook, and then begin to exhibit classic symptoms of depression. However, live contact with peers is an important element of adolescent life. Preadolescents and adolescents who suffer from Facebook depression are at risk of social isolation and sometimes turn to dodgy Internet sites and blogs for “help” that may promote substance abuse, unsafe sexual practices, or aggressive and self-destructive behaviors.
What is the role of parents?
There are parents today who are perfectly at ease with technology, and feel comfortable with the programs and online venues that their children are using. However, there are also parents who find it difficult to relate to their digitally savvy youngsters online for a variety of reasons. They may lack a basic understanding of these new forms of socialization. They may not possess the technical abilities or time needed to keep pace with their children in the ever-changing Internet landscape. The end-result is often a knowledge and technical skill gap between parents and youth, which creates a disconnect in how these parents and youth perceive the world. But of course such gap, such disconnect can always be marginalized if parents provide ample time for face-to-face social interaction with their children.
The real challenge
Dear guests, before closing, I would like to share with you some figures that I personally found impressive.
Experts estimate today that the amount of new data that is generated every day is 2.5 quintillion bytes.
The reason I mentioned these figures is to emphasize what I view as the real challenge in the social media dominating world that we live in: and that challenge is to separate the wheat from the chaff, meaning to separate useful from useless information. I am sure that the talented young students in this room are more than well equipped to make such distinction.
I wish this conference a great success. Thank you all!
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