Social Media and Influencers; Trends & Effects on Holistic Development of Adolescents

1. Introduction

In today’s world social media is demonstrating its multiple utilities across the field from Sales to Service, From Treatment to care, From Education to Career or from Tourism to Adventure one such significant utility can be noticed in the field of Adolescent learning and development. .In some of the cases teens learn things which are crucial to their development like identity formation, relationship and intimacy development, competence and confidence building etc. (Ram and Hosley 2017) but on the other hand it might have a bad influence too like glorifying foul language, use of alcohol, toxication, smoking etc. (Erin Vogel 2021)

Holistic development approach is a comprehensive approach to development it covers all aspects of human life, which is physical, mental, emotional, social, and spiritual well-being. It addresses the interconnectedness of these different dimensions and focuses on the importance of addressing all of them for achieving sustainable and equitable development, in this descriptive research we want to assess the impact of SM&I on teenagers' holistic development; while touching the trending categories of social media use, prevalence, dependence and major categories of content to figure out the impact these influencers on different channels have on teenage learning.

This research uses quantitative survey containing the question about the use, prevalence, frequency and prominent categories to understand the noticeable impact of SM&I on their development, specifically keeping their Physical, Mental, Social, Emotional and Spiritual development in mind.

Research Objectives:

• To figure out the nature, category, utility, prevalence, of content and creators among teenagers.
• To point out their impacts on holistic development of teenagers,

Research Questions:

• What are the most popular sources of content (if Independent Creator/Institutional and their content Niche)?
• What are the noticeable effects that social media shows on their holistic development (Physical, Mental, Social, Emotional, Spiritual)?

Important definition:

(a)

Holistic Development:

According to Ministry of Education govt. of Singapore “Holistic development takes into account the whole child and emphasizes the importance of their physical, social, emotional, cognitive, moral, creative and aesthetic abilities. Every aspect of a child’s development should be recognized and valued in order to maximize the potential of the child”.

(b)

Social Media:

According to British Council “social media facilitates the sharing of ideas and information through virtual networks. From Facebook and Instagram to X platform (formerly Twitter) and YouTube, social media covers a broad universe of apps and platforms that allow users to share content, interact online, and build communities”.

(c)

Social Media Influencers:

An influencer is a person who can influence the decisions of their followers because of their relationship with their audience and their knowledge and expertise in a particular area, e.g. fashion, travel or technology.

2. Literature Review

For this study I went through various research literature available at different platforms on Holistic development, Social Media Effects, YouTube and its utility, character development topics, to find out the already available knowledge about the subject. I got to know that some exciting trends have already been studied like Identity formation; Integration and Differentiation with society, personality formation etc. with the help of social media.

The holistic development approach to Adolescent Education is one of the most advanced among contemporary approaches, holistic education does not only fulfill the students but gratifies the teachers; this includes nature, sustainability and wildlife in its ambit (Hasan Ali, Jafari 2012). Most advanced countries like New Zealand, Singapore etc. are following this approach In India this approach has been implemented. This review article by Brigita and Irina (2022) could help understand this better.

The impact of Youtube influencers on the teens: Influence of YouTubers on teenagers is significant, it could be from buying behavior to physical and mental wellbeing, sometimes to copying actions like foul language but overall they heavily rely on influencers and ask personal advice(Westernberg 2016) another study in egypt suggests similar results (Ezzat Hannan 2020), 33Dülgerler & Bilgin (2022) suggested that influencers have a huge role in identity formation among teenagers; they describe this process among two headings i.e. Integration and Differentiation which are processes of recognizing themselves among a group of l4ike-minded peers and distinguishing themselves from others respectively. Influencer over the internet affects teenager’s behavior in a distinctive manner; they tend to be honest with their audience and incite their positive impact on them (Lajnef 2023).

Social media a tool for child’s development: Research by Ah Ram and Hosley (2017) suggested that Peers found to experience facilitation between online and offline tools resulting in development of six traits i.e. 1.competence, Confidence, 3. connection, 4. character, 5. compassion, and Contribution which contributes to positive youth development. Another research by Reich and Subrahmanyam (2012) suggests that adolescents significantly use social media platforms for their development needs like building relationships, developing intimacy among others. The negative influence of SM&I should also be noted like Glorifying Smoking and Alcohol consumption, use of foul language etc. (Erin Vogel 2021) however this research is not covering this aspect.

3. Materials and Methods

In this research we conducted the quantitative survey on questions about social media preferences, use prevalence, favorite content category, favorite influencers, favorite platform along with quotations about likelihood of benefits they gained by using these platforms and following influencers on Likert scale, the participants were simply asked to fill out the form after giving the context of the research.

We took a sample size of 70 students. The sample population was chosen by random sampling method from a few schools of different villages situated in Madhya Pradesh, India. The socio-economic profile of this population is likely to be a lower to lower-middle income group from various castes and religions prevailing in the region. The age group is targeted to be adolescents between 12 years to 18 years old, gender diversity is ensured to be minimum 40% of female population while caste and religion diversity is ensured to be at least 20% of the population.

In the survey questionnaire 8 questions were asked about their preferred medium, content category, frequency of use and preferred influencer while 15 questions were asked about how they perceive their development in terms of five aspects of holistic development i.e., Physical, Mental, Social, Emotional and Spiritual.

We used MS Forms for these surveys and shared the link with students to fill out the form, the responses then collected and analyzed with the help of Advanced Excel, MS forms and various other tools.

The questions asked were listed below in the appendices. Link of the survey form containing the recorded response is also attached there.

Demographic Details:

Age: 12-19 Years old, the average age of sample population is 15.65

Gender Ratio: Male 56% Female 44%

Caste Category: General - 23%, OBC - 55%, ST - 9%, SC - 9%, Minority- 4%

Social Category: Lower income to Lower Middle-Income Groups/Village Dwellers

Grade of Education: 8th Grade to 12th Grade

4. Discussion

Observing the findings of this research this could be said that social media has huge prevalence among adolescents, its reach is wide, its effects are pervasive so can be said of its influence. If content adolescents are guided in an appropriate way, social media could help effectively develop various aspects of their personalities. The research about various interference is needs to be done to figure out the kind requirements.

5. Analysis & Conclusions

After observing the finding of this research following things can be concluded -

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Social media use among adolescents is pervasive and Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube are the three most popular channels among them. Almost all of the people of this age have social media handles and are active enough on the internet, most of them use the internet more than 5 hours a week.

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Socializing and knowledge acquisition are their favorite things to do on the internet followed by entertainment and getting updated with news and current events.

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Music is the highest consumed category of content followed by Education, Information, Gaming, Health and Fitness etc.

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Among content creators or Influencers Comedy, Education and Entertainment are the top categories that adolescents prefer. Regarding the type of creator Individual creators are most popular however institutions are more preferred when we talk about education or academics.

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After analyzing the sentiments this could be said that social media could be a game changer for adolescents in their own development as most of them are involved in physical exercises, food and diet, most of them are intrigued with the social world identifying their personality type, integrating and differentiating themselves in the society making personal and social bonds they get influenced over social media and it is playing a crucial role in their formative development. It is not only limited till their Physical, social and psychological life but it is more pervasive and adolescents are actively involved in their intellectual development considering social media as a tool. Spiritual development through social media could be debated but this research shows that spiritual values like charity, empathy, forgiving and tools like prayer and meditation could be a good point to start with their spiritual development aspect.