Daily Times

Sir: I want to highlight one of the significant issues that parents are facing nowadays. They often complain that their children waste their time on different social sites like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. These sites are called social networking sites but these are making individuals unsocial. I believe that social networking sites are useless for youngsters.

Healthy communication and relationships are important in one’s life and it should not be maintained only online. A research study claims that an average teenager spends about nine hours a week on social networking sites.

At such a tender age, sleeping, studying and exercising are thought to be more important but the interaction with technology has changed the mindset of children and their priority of having fun has been reduced to sticking around in front of screens, stalking their friends’ activities, commenting and posting random stuff. Teens are allured by these sites as they can give scope for current issues and remarks with respect to them. On the other hand, adolescents are losing the urge to peruse daily newspapers.

Although social networking sites provide much news and numerous intriguing and humorous incidents of daily life, it is pretty alarming that these sites have many detrimental aspects apart from the one I mentioned above. Needless to say, it is the right time for teenagers to spend quality time studying and using these sites for a very small portion of the day. This will help them get away from the addiction. Last but not least, there should be an awareness campaign about the negative effects of addiction to these sites.

AYMEN AHMAD

Karachi