Lokesh Nandan Meher, Saugata Mallick, Manish Kumar Godara
Motivation:
Increasing studies are indicating that social networking is
having a positive impact by social connectedness and wellbeing on youth.
However negatives are also evident, with cyber-crimes which has become privacy
threat to many people. Although social networking has many good sides,
including building new contacts or reconnecting with old ones, this has brought
some psychological as well as behavioral changes among the youth.
Introduction:
Introduction of social online
networking sites has facilitated communication. These are web-sites where users
can create a profile and connect that profile to others to form an explicit
personal network. Chatting is the one of the most popular activities on the
internet nowadays. Through social networking, people can use networks of online
friends and group memberships to keep in touch with current friends, reconnect
with old friends or create real life friendships through similar interests or
groups. Besides establishing important social relationships, social networking
members can share their interests with other likeminded members by joining
groups and forums. Teenagers and young adults are the most fanatic users of
these sites. When using these sites such
as Twitter, Facebook or MySpace, there are both positive and negative effects
on the youth.
Impact:
Positive Impact: It is
inevitable to ignore the fact that nowadays social network plays an essential
role in teenagers’ lives. Most youths are spending at least an hour in these
popular social media sites. Generally, 1 out of 7 minutes which are spent
online by most of those who can access internet is spent on Facebook. This way social
media helps the youth and any other user updated with what is happening around
the world, help the teenagers stay connected and interact with each other even
if they are many miles apart. This strengthens their relationship even if they
finished school and moved to different locations they stay connected and update
one another.
In addition, social media sites have provided a platform
whereby the youth can create groups and pages based on their common discipline
and end up building connections and opportunities for their respective careers
by updating various topics to discuss. Youth who have been interviewed they say
that social media has become their lifestyle and it makes their lives easier
and efficient.
Negative Impact: While
on one hand social network sites seems to bring people together and connected
on the other hand it creates social isolation in regard to BBC News report. As
the youth tend to spend many hours on these sites, they rarely have
face-to-face interaction. According various studies, scientists’ evaluation
determined that social isolation can lead to a host of emotional,
psychological, physical and mental problems which include anxiety, depression
and somatic complaints among many others.
Other negative effects of social networking various people
suggested included encouraging poor spelling and grammar, exposing underage to
online predators, allowing spread of misinformation that is perceived as fact,
decreasing productivity as those who are supposed to be working spend time in
the sites to chat, provide a perfect platform for cyber bullying and providing
details that increase risks of identity theft.
Relevant Earlier
Studies:
Pew Global Attitudes Project, 2010. “Global publics embrace
social networking,” http://pewglobal.org/2010/12/15/global-publics-embrace-social-networking/
Barry Wellman, Aaron Smith, Amy Wells, and Tracy Kennedy,
2008. “Networked families,” Washington, D.C.: Pew Internet & American Life
Project,
Sebastián Valenzuela, Namsu Park, and Kerk F. Kee, 2009.
Facebook use and college students’ life satisfaction, trust, and
participation,” Journal of Computer–Mediated Communication, volume 14, number
4, pp. 875–901.
Study Methodology:
In our survey, a set of questionnaire consisting of nine
questions were circulated to various people of different age groups through our
facebook contacts to know the psychological and behavioral changes. The questions were related to the time spent
of social activity, relationship outside the virtual world, is there a
possibility that they would miss out anything if they hadn’t been on social
networks, etc. Survey link: http://goo.gl/forms/9XgUwGnXR0
Results:
Results are taken for 65 respondents, out of which 17% are
Female and the rest 83% are Male.
Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Discussions
Results are taken from 65 respondents. From Fig. 2, we see
that 88% of respondents spend their significant time with their
classmates/friends. About 32% people spend more than 5 hours a day in social
networks (Fig. 1), around 29% chosen between 3-5 hours. It is a total of 51%.
Now, if we look at the lifestyle of youths, an average youth gets leisure time
around 4-5 hours a day. The significant time spent on SNS (Social Networking
Sites) stands around 3-5 hrs for 51% of the respondents, this infers that they like
to spent most of their leisure time on SNS. 68% voted positive for missing out something if they do not participate in
SNS. 32% of respondents feel that among their contacts on their profiles, they
can borrow a movie or ask for a bike ride to home to only 25-50% of their
contacts, which is significantly less.
34% uses SNS just to keep in touch with friends, and 13% just use it for
general chatting. Fig. 7 shows that 62% of friends of opposite gender are more
in Social networking than in Real Life, as reported by the respondents.
Conclusion
The
primary objective of the project undertaken has been to shed light on the
evolution of the dominance of social networking sites, their psychological effects
among the Internet users and its eventual outcome in the social behavior
patterns of youth.
