A lot of kids nowadays have access to the internet and other forms of media 24/7. Some kids use this to help them advance their education and some kids just use it for fun, either way the internet, technology and media can influence kids in a positive way, a negative way or maybe not influence at all. Some people might think the odds sway one way or the other just based on what they witness and come upon with this privileged access to the internet—but it’s not like that at all.

Kids minds are like sponges, you may have heard this before. They soak up information and just about anything else whether it’s appropriate, inappropriate, true or false. Children don’t know the difference between right and wrong, not at a young age at least. So it’s not their job to be worried about what they pick up from on TV or social media platforms or even just listening to music. It’s a parent’s job to monitor their kids no matter what they are doing.  Parents nowadays will hand their kid a phone or a tablet or even a whole computer just to keep them occupied, it’s those same parents who complain to the news about their kids being addicted to games or never going outside. 

The internet can most definitely influence anyone at any age. I’m 18 and I say, do and take things from videos and music all the time. The difference between me and a kid isn’t just the age—it’s the maturity. I know if I see some music video of a rapper talking about vulgar and dangerous stuff I’m not going to go out of my way to do those things. I was given a gaming console at a young age, I was taught not to take things from it to an extreme extent. I remember this one time I watched a movie and the main character said something very inappropriate, me being a kid I repeated it and got in trouble. That might just be my parents or it might be the majority of the parents in the world, nonetheless I knew never to repeat anything from TV or video games like that ever again. There needs to be a taught consequence for behavior for kids to learn.  Media is no different.

Some parents find it easier or less embarrassing to blame the internet or social media for their kids being brats or addicted to their devices, it’s not the media’s fault, it’s the parents’ fault. The parents are in charge of the kid all the way up until they are 18 years old and beyond. By that age the individual should be grown and mature enough to know what and what not to do based on influence from the internet. But for kids who aren’t mature or smart enough to understand what and what not to do, based on influence from the internet, it’s the parents who need to teach them and make sure they don’t do anything bad in response to media exposure. The parents should be the ones raising their kids and being responsible for their kids, not the internet, and it seems as of recently I’ve seen a lot of kids without parental supervision. Which is causing these kids on the internet to act out in a way that could only be taught by the internet. So yes, anything can influence anybody but its all about how people were raised and taught to handle things like that to decide whose fault it is when something bad happens.