Dear Next President,

I want to talk about the biggest problem in this generation which is social media and gaming. Social media and online gaming are starting to ruin and change the life of young children.  Social media causes young teens to go into deep depressions which causes them to commit suicide. Suicide is a leading cause of death worldwide. Bullying is the biggest reason why young teens are going into depression and committing suicide. The solution is that we should check what our children are doing online behind closed doors. The effects of this issue is depression and suicide, mostly young children or young teens are affected emotionally. There needs to be different perspectives and experiences of this issue. Teens need to be asking themselves: How is this going to effect their family and friends? Is there something they should do to prevent this from happening? Have they thought this through?  How this is going to effect their future if they get to have one?

Parents need to observe what their children are doing. Video games have changed. Fighting games weren’t so violent, now they’re very graphic and inappropriate for children. Online gaming has also changed; some teens take the game too seriously and that’s one reason why there’s cyber bullying. Parents should teach their kids why it’s wrong to do such things and to monitor what they are doing online and in real life. For example in the article, “How to end Video Games ‘Bullying problem’", Patrick Stafford discusses how online games are bullying other users while playing online. A 2013 study from Ohio University found that when a female player in Halo 3 greeted, “Hi, everyone”- with no other information- she faced rude and harmful comments or replies. The girl didn’t do or say anything bad or mean and she got horrible replies. That’s why we need to take control of online gaming and messaging. It’s happening in real life also not just in gaming. It happens in school, outside of school, possibly at home; it’s everywhere. Anything we do to try to prevent it only makes it get bigger and bigger, and it gets out of hand. Parents out there are losing their children due to these conditions. 

We need to do something to stop these things from happening to young children and teens. The next president needs to do something that will change this problem and to stop cyber bullying or any kind of bullying to help this generation.