Social media has become a real problem for some young people today, and governments should create laws that allow only people over 18 years of age to have accounts. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement?

 Social media has become a real problem for some young people today, and governments should create laws that allow only people over 18 years of age to have accounts. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement?

Although social media plays a vital role by acting as a medium of affording latest information quickly, some are skeptical of its impact on youngsters, and suggest proscribing the latter from creating accounts on this platform. I completely dissent with this proposal, and shall explain the reasons for this in forthcoming paragraphs.  

The primary reason influencing non-acceptance of this suggestion proposes, in concurrent times, the internet has become the backbone of every walk of life, including schooling, and preventing young individuals from accessing social media platforms would do more harm than good. Almost every education institution, post the lessons they earned from the pandemic, is using this medium to disseminate lessons,  assignments and other essential information, and deriving such invaluable inputs, that could help students greatly, will be impossible without them having their own individual accounts. It has been observed that formal tuition allows entry into groups and forums to only their pupils with social media ids.    

Additionally, various social media applications like Youtube education, TeachersTube, Twitter, Researchgate, and so on, disseminate critical information about a myriad of topics related to subjects in school curriculum. These inputs can be instrumental in excellent academic outcomes of the young learners; thus, preventing them from creating and maintaining their social media profiles could prove to be counterproductive as they would be bereft of up-to-date information about various topics.  To corroborate,  the outcome of a survey conducted in New York revealed that over 85% of school goers clarified their doubts and also extracted information about their assignments from social media platforms.    

Overall, it can be asserted that such a move would impede academic progress of the school going generation that is following technology quite keenly, and knows how to derive benefits from it, but prudent monitoring is suggested.