Final research proposal paper The paper is done for the most part it needs to be tweaked a little.

Running head: TECHNOLOGY AND TEENS MENTAL DURING THE PANDEMIC 0

Technology and Teens Mental During the Pandemic

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Introduction

During the covid-19 pandemic, schools had to be closed, and the teens were to use technology such as smartphones for learning. Instead of using the technology for learning, they used it for various activities that disrupted their running and made the teens vulnerable to various threats. The technology was able to impact the teens both positively and negatively. In this paper, I will discuss how the teens were impacted by technology during the pandemic. (Stager, 2020)

Problem statement

Due to the covid-19 pandemic, teens were to stay at home and use technology for learning. Despite the teens utilizing technology for learning, they exploited it and started using it for malicious activities such as accessing social media platforms. Instead of technology helping teens to grow mentally, it started deteriorating them. To mitigate this problem, the content displayed to the teens by technology should be monitored by their parents, and inappropriate content should be eliminated.

Literature review

When the covid-19 pandemic began, teens had to stay away from schools to reduce the spread of the infection. However, by the teens staying at home for long-duration, they seemed to forget a lot regarding the school work, and the government had to search for ways that the teens would be taught. First, there were many suggestions, including half of the students reporting back to school, but it did not seem to be a good plan since half of the students would be left out on what was taught. Secondly, teaching half of the students would make the syllabus lag, which was not the plan.

Since teaching half of the students would not be applicable, the government saw that it would be wise to use technology to learn since it was effective and covid-19 would not spread using it. By this, the government also reduced attempts to make the internet available for teens to facilitate learning. In addition, the government took a step toward reducing the rates that were used when subscribing to internet plans.

By reducing the cost of the internet plan, the government went ahead and equipped the internet with very appealing learning resources, and the teens would manage to follow them without facing any problems. For the government to allow the teens to access the internet, they were to get help from their parents, who would help them with their smartphones and other electronic devices connected to the internet.

Though the teen's parents were open to giving the teens their electronic devices, the teens did not use the electronic devices for learning, but also they used them for various activities such as using social media platforms, which indirectly impacted them. By the impact of social media platforms, some teens were depressed and could not manage to keep up to their studies as expected. This facilitated worry to the parents of the teens, and they wondered if the technology was helping the teens to learn or it was a vulnerability to them.

Most parents who gave teens their smartphones did not appreciate it much since the teens concentrated more on the phone than how the teen concentrated on other activities. On some social media platforms, the teens would build relationships with other people and lose their social skills. This made parents anxious, and they were afraid that technology would mislead the teens rather than teaching them. ( Gladstone, 2018)

Research question

The main research question that the paper seeks to address is how technology would impact teens and how would it contribute to their social development?

Purpose of the study

The primary purpose of this study was to evaluate how the technology would affect the teens mentally when they were to learn to use it. In addition, the paper also seeks to examine the threats that teens would face when they used technology in learning.

Participants of the research design.

For the research to be valid and effective, it was to use various participants who would collect information and analyze them. The main research participants were the digital media platforms that collected and analyzed what teens were doing over the internet, parents, and the psychological professors. Parents were essential in monitoring what their teens did using the technology, and they reported it to the teen's teacher. On the other side, the psychology professors were essential in the research since they indicated the number of teens whom they had counseled using technology for accessing various platforms for accessing digital media.

Measures.

From the results of the research, most of the teens were impacted negatively by the technology. Around 35% of the teens ended up losing their social skills. The teens lost their social skills since they spent all the day at home scrolling on their phones, and they could not come out of the house to interact with other people.

A population of about 45% of the teens who used technology to learn ended up getting depressed since some received abuses such as being stalked while others would stay up during their bedtime using their phones. A total of 20% could adopt the technology well, and they used it for the intended purpose. Teens who used technology to study were seen performing well than the other teens who used social media to access social media platforms. (Shririn, 2020)

Research procedure

The research procedure was developed not to alter the privacy policies that the people of our country were provided. To conduct research, we began by politely requesting the parent how his/her teen used technology to learn. By this, the parents would politely give us valuable information that we would use in the research. On the psychology professors and the digital media access, it was not hard since we would collect information from their records on the reported incidents of teens misusing the technology devices.

Ethical limitations

In the constitution of the United States, the teen had the right to privacy. This made it hard for the researchers to ask what the teen was doing with the smartphone he/she was using. Secondly, when asking what the teen was doing with the technology, he/she would easily lie, becoming an obstacle for the research. Lastly, most of the teens spent most of their time on their smartphones in the bedroom while they were learning. Other teens would be depressed and go to bed, making the parents think that the teen was asleep, which was not correct.

Reference

Charmaraman, L., Gladstone, T., & Richer, A. (2018). Positive and negative associations between adolescent mental health and technology. In technology and adolescent mental health (pp. 61-71). Springer, Cham.

Chassiakos, Y. L. R., & Stager, M. (2020). Current trends in digital media: How and why teens use technology. In Technology and Adolescent Health (pp. 25-56). Academic Press.

Shririn, G (2020). The pandemic is raising concerns about how teens use technology. But there's still a lot we don't know.