19
December 2014
Parenting Challenges in Shaping
Youth’s Morality in the Age of Sexualised Social Media
In the age of
free-flowing information through advanced digital technology, society has
become active media consumers. As a result, social media has become a necessity
in life especially among youth until those who do not own a Facebook account is
considered weird or anti-social. Social media is implicitly changing the global
culture, the way people think and influences what should people believe in. As
influential as social media has become, the challenge of differentiating true
and false information is getting more arduous. Although social media has become
part and parcel of today’s youth culture, parents must be aware of the possibilities
that this medium can lead towards ambiguous morality among children including
Muslims.
Ambiguous morality is
defined as a euphemism for describing someone who lacks in morals or changes
their morals to suit their needs. Originally, this term is used to describe
corrupted businessmen or graft politicians but yet, nowadays it is also been
used to refer to young generations who do not behave well or conform to an
ideology blindly. They worship their idols on the television or Internet obsessively
due to massive waves of music and entertainment that appear like mushrooms
after a rain. Respect that should be instil in the family institutions has been
replaced with the love towards popular celebrities (Chapman, n.d.). People from
all walks of life including teenagers face hardships and stresses in life, and
they failed to sort out their problems in the right way. Hence, they will find
a way to escape the problems, and one way of doing it is through worshipping
celebrities. Popular figures can easily tap into their emotions and offer them
an escapade from everyday lives by providing a fantasy life to live on (Murphy,
2010). On the other hand, the obsession with Internet makes the Muslim youths
spend less time with their family and it may affect the family relationship. The
society itself has lost its emotional contacts within the circle. Teenagers, as
a young and heedless group fills up the inadequacy of healthy social connection
by becoming addicted to celebrities. Isolation put them into the shape of
starving for social attention (Murphy, 2010). Popular cultures such as social
media, K-Pop, Hollywood and J-Pop, dominated youths’ mentality, dressing code
and also choice of words. They play a vital role in shaping one’s behaviour. Youth
especially teenagers are most likely to involve in this dogmatic trends because
they do not think critically before conforming the culture. Pop culture in
media is manifested around the world through movies, music, television shows,
newspapers, satellite broadcasts, fast food and clothing, and even consumer
goods. (Pop Culture…, 2000). They failed to differentiate which is right or
wrong because the media has shaped almost everything that revolved around them.
This is where challenges of becoming parents in raising up the children start. The
era of digital technology requires parents and adults to educate young people
today that morality is not always subjective.
Social media is defined
as a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and
technological foundations of Web 2.0, whereby the content and information are
no longer created or published by individuals, instead they are continuously
updated and changed by multiple users in a collaborative way (Siibak, n.d.). This
is undoubtedly a big development in the world of Internet that allows responds
by anyone and enhances participation among people. Due to the massive
improvement in Internet accessibility, broadband speed and capacity, and also
youth generation whom thirsts for trending gizmos and applications in
smartphones, social media is completely in a whole new level of sophistication.
Every generation has its own uniqueness that distinguish one from another
generations (Shäffer, as cited from Siibak, n.d.). Generations of the olden
days depended solely on mass publication and spent time mostly through reading
newspapers and books. But not for today’s young generation. Youths in this
globalized era grow up with digital technology, thus being called “digital
natives” (Prensky, 2001). Research done by online charity YouthNet on a group
of 16 and 24 year olds found that 75% of them “cannot live without Internet”,
four out of five youths sought advices on websites and one third felt no need
to meet person when they have resources available online (Kids’ Top Searches…,
2009). This shows youths are relying on Internet and social media very much. No
one can deny the power of digital technology and its importance in the world.
But no one can also deny the bad effects that come if people misuse it. The one
who is affected the most is youth, as they are the dominant users of social
media. Parents should be more sophisticated and take notes on what their children
surf online (Youth Cannot Live…, 2009). Mastering the basic skills of using
social media might be helpful for parents to control and supervise children’s
activities in social sites.
Globalization has been
a phenomenon around the globe where it affects political status, economic
growth and social life. Economic impulse drives it beyond economy and up to the
extent of producing commercial global culture. One of the most commercialized
culture being promoted due to globalization is the new disgusting forms of
slavery known as sex slavery (Global Shame…, 2000). The worst part is not only
it traffics millions of vulnerable women, but also children as young as ten
years old. These children are sold, abused, trafficked and even worse,
prostituted under the supervision of blind community that denies their rights. In
numbers, the non-profit organization End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography,
and the Traffic in Children for Sexual Purposes (ECPAT) claimed that children
involved in sex industries are more than 100, 000 in all countries in view
including Thailand, Nepal, Brazil and India. The success of this industry was
proven by the victory to generate 20-23 billion dollar between 1993 and 1995
(Global Shame…, 2000). 20 years have gone by and it is with no doubt that this
number is growing day by day. All these numbers and researches show that child
pornography is getting worse. In Chicago, 27 people from 4 different countries
have been arrested for using an Internet chat room to trade child porn and
exchange videos of live molestation. Seven victims in the videos were
identified and one of them was less than 18 months old (Child Porn Ring…,
2006). With the abundance of new digital technology, file and information
sharing have become a lot more convenient. Perpetrators misuse this digital
technology to further luring children into their traps. They are exploiting
children for their profits and one easy way to get in touch with the children
is simply through social media. It allows the users to create personalized profile
and details about themselves online. Social media serves as an electronic door
for perpetrators to lure innocent young teenagers and naïve children with
affection, kindness and attention before meeting them in person. Parents and
adults must be fully aware of what is happening around their children, not only
physically but also virtually. Constant monitoring on the adolescents’ online
activities must be enforced to avoid them becoming a victim of child
pornography. All these while, parents are left with an option to find and
install monitoring software on their own. This is troublesome for certain
people because they do not have time and knowledge to search for suitable
software to be used. Thus, manufacturers should come with a built-in online
monitoring system before selling the computers to the customers (Web Content
Disturbing…, 2008). It is important to ensure the safety of children when
surfing the Internet. In brief, online activities of youths and teenagers
should be carefully monitored by parents because there is a high tendency for
them to be involved in child pornography through social media.
Social media, when it
is misused, will be a platform of moral degradation and crime victimisation. In
this context, cyberbullying is one of the major Internet cases happened online.
Social media allows its users to hide their true identities using other names
and fake pictures. This is where the problem of cyberbullying occurs. By using
fake identities, abusers will easily get access to the victims’ profiles and
flaming them by mocking, spreading rumours, sending mean messages and posting
embarrassing pictures and videos of the victims (What is Cyberbullying…, n.d.).
Although social media is built to keep people closer, there will always be
bullies out there trying to get in and take advantage of others (Skye, n.d.). Abusers
will use derogatory remarks and obnoxious words to portray hatred towards the
victims and as a result, the victims feel demotivated and unconfident about
their own self. The feeling of rejection by society haunts them and hence,
leading to an escapade of life such as isolation and suicide. Furthermore,
bullying victims are 2 to 9 times more likely to commit suicide than those who
do not experience it. And frankly, those with obese or overweight kids have 63%
more tendency to be bullied than those with normal body weight (Skye, n.d.). People
who suffer from stress of their personalities will be pessimistic and cynical
about living their life, and thus they will take a quick route to end it as
soon as possible. Facebook, Ask.fm, and Twitter are sources of major cases of
cyberbullying all over the world (Butterly, 2013). Social media is where
abusers can obtain personal details about the victims to be used against them.
Information such as name, address, phone number, study place, likes and
dislikes and even profile picture of a person can be taken from social media.
Anonymity of identity increases the urge of abusers to attack their victims
through cyber space without being sniffed out. Major suicide cases that caused
by cyberbullying are very deteriorating, as the victims were all young and
underage. 14-year-old Hannah Smith and 15-year-old Amanda Todd were some of
suicide cases happened due to cyberbullying. Parental supervision over online
activities of their children must be strictly done to avoid cyberbullying.
Children especially teenagers should be advised not to reveal their private
information or talking with strangers online and consult to the trusted adults
if they cross upon harassing emails or contents (Gerber, n.d.). In other words,
parents have to make sure their children are not opening up personal
information online as it may be used to harass them by cyberbullies.
Bruce Feiler, a writer
who is also a father of two daughters living in the cosmopolitan city of New
York was taken aback by the choice of clothes his children chose to wear in
public (Feiler, 2013). He was uncertain on how to deal with the issue of
children’s emerging sexuality so soon. This shows the critical roles that
popular culture has on fashion industry in shaping children’s sense of
morality. Fashion is also a popular culture that comes through the emerging
world of digital technology. Earlier, fashion is mostly emphasized on adults
rather than teenagers or children. But, time has changed and now, fashion is
the keyword for almost all teenagers. The bags they carry, the watch they wear
and the shirts they put on are involving fashion. The main source of getting
information about trending fashion can be easily accessed through digital
technology and mostly came from social media. This is where fashion designers
or celebrities put their new garments in Instagram or Facebook for public view.
Teenagers will have a tendency to copy their favourite celebrities’ styles and
looks as they are too naïve to differentiate the appropriateness of what they
are copying (Khan, 2014). Furthermore, with the existence of social media that
can be updated on daily basis, fashion crisis for youngsters have been more
severe. Fashion companies take advantages of this medium to further increase
their marketing and pick young adolescents as their main target. Because they
know adolescents are their biggest source of income as they are mostly
uneducated and uninitiated of the harms in following latest fashion. Trends
will always come and go, thus teenagers must spend a lot of money in order to
stick with the latest one (Pandey, 2013). It will encourage youths to spend
excessively and waste their pocket money for the sake of clothing and
accessories. Teenagers should spend their money on reference books and
co-curricular activities, not jewelleries or high cut leopard-skinned boots. Following
latest trends of fashion will be a major problem for teenagers because this
will also affect the choice of the clothes that may be improper for their ages.
Not all trending fashion are suitable for teenagers as the dresses are
provocatively exposing bodies and adult kinds of clothes. Sexualisation of
culture has made its way into children’s fashion and thus, offering sexualizing
forms of “childlike fashion”. A young girl will be pressured to grow up too
fast because they want to wear all those trendy clothes such as push-up bra and
mini underskirts (Ahmad, n.d.). Also they are more likely to deviate from
studies due to obsession only in fashion magazines and fashion forums in social
media. The emergence of social media that can be updated every single second
really influences teenagers whom are crazy for newest trends or styles from
their beloved celebrities. Without any proper guidance from parents in fashion
and also the usage of social media, this pornification of culture will bring
about bad consequences to the children. Parents must bear in mind to educate
them about the suitable way of choosing clothes and not to be easily fooled by
trending fashion and sexy clothes advertised in social media.
Living on the 21st
century where all kinds of information is only at the tip of fingers is surely
a convenient thing to be experienced. But unfortunately, the easier life is,
the harder parenting will be. This is because it is becoming more arduous to
look after the children about the hidden dangers of cyber world. Modern child
is living in a digital technology world that older generation can barely keep
up with. Despite omnipresent technology, parents have to contend with it in
order to protect their children from harmful unrestricted access of Internet (Makori,
2012). Digital technology might come in handy, but when it is misused, it can
lead to a bigger problem especially in terms of safety and morality. Child
pornography exposes children to uncensored sexual contents and encourages sex
to the youngsters. Children might be victimized by the perpetrators for sexual
purpose and this is where parents have to reinforce the safety of children on
the net. On the other hand, social media can also make ways for moral
degradation among youths. Simply because it offers vast field of trending news
including improper fashion for teens. If parents fail to educate their children
on how to differentiate the decent and the unsuitable ones, there will be a
problem on guiding the children’s morality.
Children are a blessing
of God for married couples. Raising them up righteously is an obligation for
all parents including Muslims. Take an example on how the best role model of
humankind, Prophet Muhammad PBUH handled many situations involving minors with
patience and good-naturedness (Farooqi, 2013). Parents must raise up their
children wisely without stressing on hard and fierce methods all the way. Fostering
resilience might be one way of controlling and harnessing love in the family as
research shows that it creates a positive atmosphere among family members
especially for the children (Christakis, 2012). There are lots of factors that
can improve children’s abilities such as optimism, flexibility and self-esteem
that are not being taught in class. Boosting up these values orally to them
will help to make them feel more appreciated and loved. Laughter, quality time
and family love are necessities in a family institution. Children being
obsessed with social media mainly because they do not acquire all these basic
needs in the family. As a result, they switch to the cyber world to get this
kind of attention without knowing there are lots of unexpected hazards lie
within. Hence, parents must nourish the family with love in order to become
close with the children and guide them about clear boundary between improper
and proper morality. Not forgotten, they have to cope with digital technology
to control and restrict children from dangerous threads online.
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