International Business College Mitrovica Social media effect on youth lives

Running hard: Social media effect on youth lives

Research report
Social media effect on youth lives


International Business College
Blagica Rizoska
30/06/2014
Mitrovic










Student number: 091302420998
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Table of Contents
Abstract ......................................................................................................................................................... 2
Method ......................................................................................................................................................... 6
Results ........................................................................................................................................................... 8
Discussion.................................................................................................................................................... 10
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................... 11
References .................................................................................................................................................. 12










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Abstract


The purpose of this study was to identify if are we letting social pages become to prominent in
our lives and how much social media effects on our youth?
As we all know sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other pages have become prominent
parts of many teenagers today, but what is it really? What are the positive and negative
affects? Are we as a society becoming people who are more concerned with Instagram or
Facebook than our daily lives?
The impact of social media on teens is growing day after day and experts worry that text
messages and social media that have become very much integral to teenage life are promoting
lower self-esteem in teenagers who use them the most.
Teens are masters at staying busy in the hours after school until the bedtime comes, when they
are not doing their homework they probably are online and on their phones on social media
like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Myspace texting, scrolling, sharing (Ehmke, 2013). Of
course before everyone had Facebook teens kept themselves occupied, too, but they were
more likely to be friendly and hang out with friends, experimenting, trying out skills, things that
today kids are missing on.
Learning how to be friends with someone is one of the major parts on the process of growing
up, and nowadays most of the kids almost never go outside to play, and the best way to make
new friends is playing together with them.
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Social media affects the way kids look at intimacy and friendship, according to the researchers.
The typical youngster has at least 300 Facebook friends and 100 Twitter followers. A study also
says the norms of privacy are changing and the majority of teens post photos and personal
informations about themselves for all the people they have on their friends list to see. (Dakin,
2013)
Digital communication in itself is a really bad thing for our society, because we are losing out on
opportunities to connect with people outside our homes and offices and we can see that as a
problem.
When it comes to these social sites we can find positive aspects but there are equally as many
negative that come with the uses of sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Myspace, and in
order to be aware of all the good and bad sides of social media sides we must research this
topic before we or our children become addicted in social media.
Teens share a wide range of information about themselves on social media sites; indeed the
sites themselves are calculated to encourage the sharing of information and the growth of
networks. However, few teens hold a fully public approach to social media. Instead, they take a
selection of steps to limit and clip their profiles, and their patterns of standing management on
social media differ greatly according to their gender and network size.

Teens are sharing and posting more information about themselves on social media pages like
Facebook or Twitter than they did in the past.
The typical youngster Facebook user has 300 friends, while the typical teen Twitter user has 79
followers.
Most of teens that use Facebook, keep their profiles private, and most report high levels of self-
assurance in their ability to manage their settings.
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Teens take other steps to shape their standing, manage their networks, and mask information
they dont want others to know; 74% of teen social media users have deleted people from their
network or friends list.
On Facebook, rising network size goes hand in hand with network variety, information sharing,
and individual information management. Teens are more and more posting personal
information on social media sites, a trend or we can call a a problem that is likely driven by the
development of the platform youth use as well as changing norms around sharing...
photo of themselves
school name
city or town where they live
email address
cell phone number
In teens profile you can find these kind of informations about them
the real name
interests, such as movies they like and music
Birth date.
Relationship status.
Videos of themselves.
Almost all teenagers use internet today and most of the things they do when they are online
are like sending or reading emails, go to websites about movies, TV shows, music, or sports.
Online games are also much visited sites from teens as they want to keep themselves busy
doing something. They tend to check their sites more than once in a day, also post something
once in a day. Social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter can also be a great tool for teens,
helping them for market skills of small business opportunities, you might be able to help
someone else out with something they are interested in, for instance, one of your friends might
mention that he needs a mechanic in his home for repairing his vehicle and you might know
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someone who is perfect for the job, all you have to do is send a couple of messages at the
people you know and you will be helping two friends at the same time.
Social media has also the negative effect on people especially on youth; social networking sites
support people to be more public about their personal lives. Because private details of our lives
can be posted so easily, users are prone to avoid the filters they might normally employ when
talking about their private lives. What's more, the things they post stay available for an
indefinite period. While at one moment a photo of friends doing shots at a party they organized
may seem safe, the image may appear less beautiful in the context of an employer doing a
background check. While most sites let their users to control who sees the things they've
posted, such limits are frequently forgotten, can be hard to control or don't work as fine as
advertised. (Jung, 2013)


Method

Participants
My target group (sample) for this survey was youth in the city of Mitrovica and Vushtrria. 38
participants were included in my survey, which had to complete the survey online. I found
online the survey and I just made some changes. The purpose of this survey was to collect
general information about the impact of social media on teenagers. The main characteristics of
the participants are presented in the table that follows:
Table 1


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General Characteristics of the Participants

Characteristics Categories
Results
Gender Males
Females
20
18
Age Less than 18
More than 18
38
0
Nationality Albanian /
Bosnian
37
1
Education

High School
University
16
22
Job position Workers
Jobless
18
20


Measures
The scale that was used for measuring how much social media infects the lives of young
generation nowadays with the questioner Social media effect on youth lives. This
questionnaire contains 10 questions; each question contains 2 or 4 solutions. The general
information questioner contains fields for: gender, age, nationality, education and job position.
Procedure

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The data are collected on July 2014. The questioners were filled online on social pages like
Facebook or Twitter where I used my friends to answer the questionnaire. The participation in
this survey was voluntarily and it was anonym. The questioners were completed during 24
hours period and the whole procedure went without any problem or any resistance.

Design
In this study the social media impact on youth was researched: The purpose of this
investigation was to know how many of our young generations use social media, like Facebook,
Twitter or Instagram.
Results

In this research the hypothesis is investigated by using independent sample t-test as statistic.
Different participants completed the questioner for Social Media effects on our youth.
The results from the t-test are presented in table 2:


Group Statistics
Which is least
effective? N Mean Std. Deviation
Std. Error
Mean
Gender Facebook 5 1.00 .000 .000
Twitter 25 1.40 .500 .100

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Independent Samples Test

Levene's Test for Equality of
Variances t-test for Equality of Means
F Sig. t df
Sig. (2-
tailed)
Mean
Difference
Std. Error
Differenc
e
95%
Confid
ence
Interva
l of the
Differe
nce
Lower
Gender Equal
varianc
es
assume
d
112.000 .000 -1.764 28 .089 -.400 .227 -.865
Equal
varianc
es not
assume
d

-4.000 24.000 .001 -.400 .100 -.606
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As we can see in the descriptive results the participants are separated in groups 5 and 25
according to their answer. In general people think that Twitter is least effective for youth and
they prefer to use Facebook instead.


Discussion

The results showed us which social pages prefer the young generations, how much they use
them, which are they favorite ones and how they impact on their daily life Young adults are the
most probable people to say they use social media sites, while women are more likely than
men or rural users to be on the sites. Teenagers from Mitrovica and Vushtrri are addicted on
using social pages like Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. In lots of cases it is clear that social
media has turn out to be not only part of peoples lives but the thing their life goes around. We
see people on their smartphones every one or two minutes looking for the latest status updates
from their friends or the newest tweets on Twitter. We find that being Facebook official
brings strength to things in our lives and the list of examples goes on. Its vital to realize that
this huge tool is just that, a tool, not a lifestyle. Facebook is the dominant social networking
period in the number of users, but an outstanding number of users are now using other
platforms like Twitter or Instagram. Majority of students that participated on survey believe
that Facebook is the best social page they are using, leaving behind Twitter and Instagram.
Instagram and Twitter have a considerably minor number of users than Facebook does, but
users of these sites also tend to visit them regularly. Overall, most of adults that answered the
questions use two or more of these social networks, while a small part of them use just one or
two of these social pages. Among those who only use one main social networking platform, 80
% say that Facebook is the single site that they frequent (Duggan, 2013; Smith 2013). 60 % of
participants believe that social media sites effect negatively on their personal life, the other 40
% think that social media sites are good for their life and their effects are positive. Social media
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can also help those young people who knowledge nervousness or social anxiety. Shy young
people can gain comfort and self-assurance in social interactions in more than a few ways. Shy
children can use social media to conquer what is perhaps their most hard challenge, namely,
initiate new relationships, in a low-risk surroundings. They can avoid clumsiness that is
widespread to making friends by allowing them to gain knowledge with others and build
friendships online. Shy children can also practice social skills with the family member distance
and safety afford by social media.



Conclusion

The general conclusion from this research is that social pages are becoming too prominent on
our lives and is affecting more and more in our young generations. According the results we can
see that teenagers prefer to use social media sites instead of playing outside or learning.
Furthermore this study is providing more evidences about the usage of Facebook or Twitter and
the difference on teens selection about social pages. Technology is neither good nor bad, but,
at the similar time, it isn't neutral also. The effect that technology has on your children depends
not on the technology by itself, but quite on how you educate them about it and the
experiences they have with it. It is your blame to become informed about the possible benefits
and costs of this new digital age and then make purposeful decisions about the type and
quantity of technology you depiction your children to.



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References

Dakin, P. (2014). Social media affecting teens' concepts of friendship, intimacy. :
Ehmke, R. (2013). Teens and Social Media. :
Lenhart, A., & Madden, M. (2007). Teens, privacy & online social networks how teens
Duggan, M., & Brenner, J. (2013). The demographics of social media users, 2012. Washington,
D.C.: Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project.
Tuten, T. L., & Solomon, M. R. (2014). Social media marketing (1. ed., Pearson new internat.
ed.). Harlow: Pearson.
Meiselwitz, G. H. (). Social computing and social media: 6th International Conference, SCSM
2014, held as part of HCI International 2014, Heraklion, Crete, Greece, June 22-27, 2014 :
proceedings. : .
Kirsh, S. J. (2010). Media and youth: a developmental perspective. Chichester, U.K.: Wiley-
Blackwell.
Deen, H. S. (2012). Social media: usage and impact. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books.
Kirkpatrick, D. (2010). The Facebook effect: the inside story of the company that is connecting
the world. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Appendix 1

In this appendix is presented the effect of media on young generations. The original questioners
were on Albanian language, official language of Kosovo. For purpose of better understanding
they are translated in English language.

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General information about participant

GENDER
AGE
NATIONALITY





1. Gender
Female Male
2. Age
Less than 18 More than 18
3. Nationality
Albanian Bosnian Serbian
4. Education
High school University
5. Which of the following social media do u participate in?
Facebook Twitter Instagram
6. Which of these social networking websites do you use most often?
Facebook Twitter Instagram
7. Which is least effective?
Facebook Twitter Instagram
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8. In the last 24 hours how many times you checked your social pages?
Once Twice More than thrice
9. Which one of the social Medias do you value more?
Facebook Twitter Instagram
10. How social medias impact in your life?
Positively Negatively




Thank you for your participation.