by sam
While growing up, there was always a certain amount of pressure to do well at school and to behave in the right way, but have those pressures changed for the children of this generation?
Netmums suggest that marketing, media and peer pressure have encouraged children to grow up too fast, and with the latest announcement that LinkedIn are reducing the minimum age from 18 to 13, it would seem that YES, social media is leading to children growing up too fast.
It is difficult to understand why children of such ages need all these social media platforms. Why do children who are 13 years old need LinkedIn? They do not have jobs and are not looking for jobs. They aren’t even old enough to work. Isn’t LinkedIn meant to be for professionals? Who knows? But it would have made more sense to introduce it to those old enough to work and who would be seeking jobs such as 16 and 17 year olds.
Dr Bernie Hogan said that the development would help children to “differentiate between the public profile they want for employment and the personal profile they share on Facebook”. Which will be helpful but the problem is that employers still search for people during recruiting. This suggests that employers need to change their recruiting processes in order for children to fully benefit from the changes made to LinkedIn and for applicants to no longer face unintended discrimination.
So have LinkedIn made a mistake? Is this too much for children? Will it add to the pressure? Will the children become a nuisance to the professionals already on the social media platform? Will professionals stop using LinkedIn? Nobody knows what the impact of these changes may have. But the potential disadvantages it may bring are huge.
Children do not need another social platform where they can be unfortunately easily targeted by cyber bullying. They do not need any more pressures, especially 13 years olds. They are facing pressures of not knowing where they fit in, discovering who they are as a person and on top of all that what to do in life due to the choices needed to be made about their education.
But is it all social media’s fault? Or have the pressures increased as the years have moved on. Children are facing increasing pressures now. Children are made to worry about so much more compared with 10 years ago; appearance, acting tough, weight, education, life’s prospects and so on and so on. But social media doesn’t help. It does add to those pressures but it isn’t the only thing at fault.