Issues posed on
Social Media & their effects
Abstract
Social Media have been incorporated
in our daily life’ which; engenders multiple positive and negative impacts in
our daily social, economic, psychological, and personal lives. Thus, it is very
much important to assess their roles in our regular life. For the scrutiny of
the function of social media, some important hypotheses were developed on the
basis of the opinions from few experts and personal experience. Then, a brief
but rigorous survey upon mutual agreement had been conducted on TTU students to
obtain the insights of future potentials. Thenceforth, critical analysis was
performed on the hypotheses, with the valuable suggestions and advice from
every participant of the ESL class of TTU, based on the students’ opinion. This
important analysis would help us to understand the multiple positive and
negative effects of social media in our regular life. Furthermore, it was
assist us to optimize the usage of social media in our daily life.
Keywords: Social
media, social change, survey.
InroductionSocial media have become a part and parcel in our daily life day by day. As a matter of fact, we are utilizing the social media for the purpose of personal networking, business communication etc. Thus, it has both advantageous and harmful effects on our both personal and social life. Hence, we, a group of students from ESL-Academic Writing class of Texas Tech University, are trying to investigate the impact of social media in our daily lives by collecting notions from diverse students from our university. Before writing the survey, our group members found numerous opinions from different specialists who are researching on social media. The main idea to collect these opinions, was to get the hypotheses behind the effect of social media in one’s lifestyle, based on the thoughts of TTU students. A survey was carried on among the TTU students and a statistical interpretation of the quantities was made to support the hypotheses. These hypotheses include the students’ perception on the effects of social media on business, impacts on student life, relief from stress using social media etc. However, there are many damaging effects posed by social media which I am more concerned about. That’s why in the following chapters, a rigorous effort will be made to draw various negative and positive impacts analyzed by various social scientists. After that, we discussed those issues among ourselves, and; concurred about some common issues which was carried on intelligently as survey questions to a variety of TTU students. The demography of the TTU students was divided into the following: Male/ Female, Graduate/ Undergraduate, US citizen/Non US citizen etc. Based on that comparative study, we may be able to get a better picture of the issues posed by the social media.
Literature Review
Many researchers
are working on the issues that have been posed by social media for several
years. Some of the advantages and disadvantages are described in this chapter.
Social media can be used as a remembering tool. Susan Kelley (2016) suggested that posting the personal experiences in social sites assist the students to recollect the memory faster. This is now normal for the social sites, as they re-posted the shared pictures on an individual’s timeline which facilitates their retention of personal memory. It may refresh people’s minds, as they can cherish the golden past. The survey on the TTU students depicted a picture about the feature of the social media for helping their memory.
A professor from UNC-Charlotte (2016) proposed that social media can be utilized as a tracking tool of drug dealing by analyzing the regular updates of the miscreant i.e. dealer. He suggested that a database of those drug dealers is needed to be created and thereafter, they should be tracked via their social sites. It helped the police to track down any offender more easily by analyzing their relationship with other people and their position. Based on the beliefs of the students, the survey provided us the feasibility of this type of role from social media in the society.
David Glenn (2013) indicated that one of the primary benefits of social sites is to connect people globally. Generally, international students use social media more to connect with their family, friends and colleagues abroad. The most popular media of communication is now a days are Facebook and, Google Plus for their accessibility, and user friendliness. Besides, it is observed that, the US students like more of these sites for sharing information with their friends. However, there are other means to communicate like: - telephone and, fax; still, social sites have become more convenient, as; it is very easy to share photos and; data via these sites. Not only that, but social sites are providing video calls, which are much more advantageous and connect people in a speck of time. For this reason, a comparative study was carried on among both international and US students to get their ideas about it.
To become a successful businessman, people need to be dynamic. Hence, social media like: LinkedIn facilitate people with proper information and hence, dynamicity. Ryan Holmes (2015) gave his opinion for utilizing the social sites on business. He talked about the potential of social media and how companies leverage on it. Additionally, he suggested that there are lots of skilled people using the internet. Those people should be chosen by the business firms intelligently, so that; those business firms can be benefitted. Thus, the questionnaire was asked the TTU students what their idea about this positive side of social media is.
In student life, social media can play a vital role for study. Karadkar (2015) suggested that, by using social media, information flow and knowledge sharing can become easier. The greatness of the social site is there is no boundary for knowledge distribution. Along with that, various experiences are now being shared by clicking the mouse. To some extent, this hypothesis is ambiguous. Therefore, a survey among a number of students may provide clarity about this issue.
There are many side effects of using social media. It is not advisable to become obsessed about it. Jung (2016) conducted a series of surveys on the social media-obsessed people, where; he found out that too much obsession is harmful, because, the social media is nothing but a virtual world. The social site-obsessed people are less capable of distinguishing in between real world and virtual world. It begets psychological trauma to those people. For this hypothesis, there is a possibility of getting dubious data due to probable denial from social media addicted people. Hence, some of the intelligent questions were there to investigate the students’ beliefs about this effect.
Some people think that social media offer some good platforms for sharing violence to get rid of it. However, Wayne (2016) wrote that posting violence brings psychological problems rather than benefits. This kind of posting may make some peoples aware, but; it can be responsible for more incidents of distress, heart attack, and stress. This issue of social media is a matter of argument whether this is good or bad for students. The survey among the students’- tested this hypothesis by finding out their thinking.
Gregoire (2015) investigated the impacts of social media on the mental health and growth of teens. He found a negative correlation between overuses of social media and psychological growth of teens. However, he suggested that medical representatives incorporate medical advice into social media, so that; all of the peoples get benefitted.
Tomasjewski (2012) gave a good idea of incorporation of social media with the stereotyped class lecture based on Dr. Richard’s study. He proposed that if students in the classroom can use social media for their education purpose, it enhances their learning capability. And by sharing the knowledge with pupil from different parts of the world, they are able to tackle any problem from different point of views. Comparative study among TTU students gave us the idea of what they really are thinking about this issue of social media in educational sphere.
Whiteman (2015) suggested that social media can affect our mental health and wellbeing. Although the purpose of social media is to get relief from boredom and loneliness; too frequent use of social sites can increase the anxiety and stress as, the user needs to deal with lots of people. That’s why they suggested limited usage of social sites in our daily life style.
Hypotheses
On the basis of various social scientists’ findings, we were able to establish a few hypotheses on some issues posed by social media, which; we analyzed in this paper on the basis of the perception of TTU students. In fact, we were more interested to get an idea of how they feel about these issues. Among all the issues, I was curious about the following topics:
a) Is social media a good medium for changing any social view? Accordingly, we need to determine whether social sites can be utilized in serious issues pertaining to sovereignty of the country. As an example: - social media was alleged to be responsible for the onset of “Arab Spring”. What do students think about it?
b) What do students feel about the social site abuse and privacy infringement? Do they really care? Do they think any regulatory body should keep an eye to these issues?
c) How do TTU student community think about the effect of engagement of social media can alter one’s mood?
d) What is the perception of students’ about posting violence and racial conflicts in social media affect a person psychologically?
e) How TTU students feel about the government regulations on social media?
Results
To investigate the effects of social media in life, we conducted a survey among 294 peoples out of approximate 36,000 students (2016) from Texas Tech University. There were many generalized questions for the survey, but we were more interested in the questions which would support/disprove our hypotheses. To reduce the complications for the compilation of data, we agreed on the demographic criteria to be limited to few things i.e. gender, profession, nationality and age only. Furthermore, for maintaining the equality of gender, rigorous effort has been made to collect data from equal number of male and female students. However, data from total 145 female students and 149 male students was obtained. In percentage, female participants’ percentage was 49.31% whereas, male participants’ percentage was 50.69% which indicated the semi-equality of gender data. Besides gender, we also agreed to collect data from mostly US students. Thus, 251 out of 294 participants were Americans which confirmed our agreement. Additionally, it can be observed from the demographic data that most of them were young i.e. 18-23 years old (61.22% of overall population) and, undergraduate students (56.80% of overall population). Furthermore, it can be observed from demographic data that 27.89% students were graduate students and only 4.4% people were not from study background. Along with that, when we take nationality into account, 4.28% people were not US citizen, 64.62% people were Texan and 30.61% people were from different parts of this country. This demographic data collection shows a variety of data ranging in different nationality, age, gender and profession, although; there were some poor data observed as some people didn’t answer some of the questions. In addition, demographic data lacks of participants from medical and law school due to different campus. Nevertheless, almost all participants responded to all the questions, which suffices our requirement. This may not be the overall picture of TTU students, but; we can get a general insight into these students’ opinions.
Our first hypothesis was that social
media can be an excellent tool for social change by means of awakening people.
In fact, we thought students may use this media for social development or
demonstration against any odds. However, we were somehow right, as; 23.80%
people use this advantage of social media confidently, and 38.77% of people use
this feature sometimes. Besides this percentage, 22.78% people reported that
they rarely use this feature and 13.94% of students never used social media as
a tool for social change. Only 2 out of 294 people had no idea how social media
could be utilized for betterment.Social media can be used as a remembering tool. Susan Kelley (2016) suggested that posting the personal experiences in social sites assist the students to recollect the memory faster. This is now normal for the social sites, as they re-posted the shared pictures on an individual’s timeline which facilitates their retention of personal memory. It may refresh people’s minds, as they can cherish the golden past. The survey on the TTU students depicted a picture about the feature of the social media for helping their memory.
A professor from UNC-Charlotte (2016) proposed that social media can be utilized as a tracking tool of drug dealing by analyzing the regular updates of the miscreant i.e. dealer. He suggested that a database of those drug dealers is needed to be created and thereafter, they should be tracked via their social sites. It helped the police to track down any offender more easily by analyzing their relationship with other people and their position. Based on the beliefs of the students, the survey provided us the feasibility of this type of role from social media in the society.
David Glenn (2013) indicated that one of the primary benefits of social sites is to connect people globally. Generally, international students use social media more to connect with their family, friends and colleagues abroad. The most popular media of communication is now a days are Facebook and, Google Plus for their accessibility, and user friendliness. Besides, it is observed that, the US students like more of these sites for sharing information with their friends. However, there are other means to communicate like: - telephone and, fax; still, social sites have become more convenient, as; it is very easy to share photos and; data via these sites. Not only that, but social sites are providing video calls, which are much more advantageous and connect people in a speck of time. For this reason, a comparative study was carried on among both international and US students to get their ideas about it.
To become a successful businessman, people need to be dynamic. Hence, social media like: LinkedIn facilitate people with proper information and hence, dynamicity. Ryan Holmes (2015) gave his opinion for utilizing the social sites on business. He talked about the potential of social media and how companies leverage on it. Additionally, he suggested that there are lots of skilled people using the internet. Those people should be chosen by the business firms intelligently, so that; those business firms can be benefitted. Thus, the questionnaire was asked the TTU students what their idea about this positive side of social media is.
In student life, social media can play a vital role for study. Karadkar (2015) suggested that, by using social media, information flow and knowledge sharing can become easier. The greatness of the social site is there is no boundary for knowledge distribution. Along with that, various experiences are now being shared by clicking the mouse. To some extent, this hypothesis is ambiguous. Therefore, a survey among a number of students may provide clarity about this issue.
There are many side effects of using social media. It is not advisable to become obsessed about it. Jung (2016) conducted a series of surveys on the social media-obsessed people, where; he found out that too much obsession is harmful, because, the social media is nothing but a virtual world. The social site-obsessed people are less capable of distinguishing in between real world and virtual world. It begets psychological trauma to those people. For this hypothesis, there is a possibility of getting dubious data due to probable denial from social media addicted people. Hence, some of the intelligent questions were there to investigate the students’ beliefs about this effect.
Some people think that social media offer some good platforms for sharing violence to get rid of it. However, Wayne (2016) wrote that posting violence brings psychological problems rather than benefits. This kind of posting may make some peoples aware, but; it can be responsible for more incidents of distress, heart attack, and stress. This issue of social media is a matter of argument whether this is good or bad for students. The survey among the students’- tested this hypothesis by finding out their thinking.
Gregoire (2015) investigated the impacts of social media on the mental health and growth of teens. He found a negative correlation between overuses of social media and psychological growth of teens. However, he suggested that medical representatives incorporate medical advice into social media, so that; all of the peoples get benefitted.
Tomasjewski (2012) gave a good idea of incorporation of social media with the stereotyped class lecture based on Dr. Richard’s study. He proposed that if students in the classroom can use social media for their education purpose, it enhances their learning capability. And by sharing the knowledge with pupil from different parts of the world, they are able to tackle any problem from different point of views. Comparative study among TTU students gave us the idea of what they really are thinking about this issue of social media in educational sphere.
Whiteman (2015) suggested that social media can affect our mental health and wellbeing. Although the purpose of social media is to get relief from boredom and loneliness; too frequent use of social sites can increase the anxiety and stress as, the user needs to deal with lots of people. That’s why they suggested limited usage of social sites in our daily life style.
Hypotheses
On the basis of various social scientists’ findings, we were able to establish a few hypotheses on some issues posed by social media, which; we analyzed in this paper on the basis of the perception of TTU students. In fact, we were more interested to get an idea of how they feel about these issues. Among all the issues, I was curious about the following topics:
a) Is social media a good medium for changing any social view? Accordingly, we need to determine whether social sites can be utilized in serious issues pertaining to sovereignty of the country. As an example: - social media was alleged to be responsible for the onset of “Arab Spring”. What do students think about it?
b) What do students feel about the social site abuse and privacy infringement? Do they really care? Do they think any regulatory body should keep an eye to these issues?
c) How do TTU student community think about the effect of engagement of social media can alter one’s mood?
d) What is the perception of students’ about posting violence and racial conflicts in social media affect a person psychologically?
e) How TTU students feel about the government regulations on social media?
Results
To investigate the effects of social media in life, we conducted a survey among 294 peoples out of approximate 36,000 students (2016) from Texas Tech University. There were many generalized questions for the survey, but we were more interested in the questions which would support/disprove our hypotheses. To reduce the complications for the compilation of data, we agreed on the demographic criteria to be limited to few things i.e. gender, profession, nationality and age only. Furthermore, for maintaining the equality of gender, rigorous effort has been made to collect data from equal number of male and female students. However, data from total 145 female students and 149 male students was obtained. In percentage, female participants’ percentage was 49.31% whereas, male participants’ percentage was 50.69% which indicated the semi-equality of gender data. Besides gender, we also agreed to collect data from mostly US students. Thus, 251 out of 294 participants were Americans which confirmed our agreement. Additionally, it can be observed from the demographic data that most of them were young i.e. 18-23 years old (61.22% of overall population) and, undergraduate students (56.80% of overall population). Furthermore, it can be observed from demographic data that 27.89% students were graduate students and only 4.4% people were not from study background. Along with that, when we take nationality into account, 4.28% people were not US citizen, 64.62% people were Texan and 30.61% people were from different parts of this country. This demographic data collection shows a variety of data ranging in different nationality, age, gender and profession, although; there were some poor data observed as some people didn’t answer some of the questions. In addition, demographic data lacks of participants from medical and law school due to different campus. Nevertheless, almost all participants responded to all the questions, which suffices our requirement. This may not be the overall picture of TTU students, but; we can get a general insight into these students’ opinions.
Our second hypothesis was that social media could be used to infringe on the personal privacy. We were right about our assumption, as; 107 among 294 people thought social media could be used to interrupt their privacy and 103 people thought it might break the privacy sometimes. In respect to percentage, 36.39%. of people reported they thought social media surely breaks their privacy, 35.03% of people reported that it hampered privacy sometimes, 27.89% of people thought otherwise. Interestingly, all of the students who thought social media surely disturbed their privacy were male which can broaden our focus of discussion later. Two among 294 people didn’t answer the question in the survey.
After that, we hypothesized that social media could change our mood, as; there were many refreshing elements provided there. However, we were proved wrong from analysis of the data, as; a greater percentage i.e. 55.10% thought otherwise. From the survey, it was observed that; 14.96% of people were not sure about it, 26.53% people thought it had the mood altering feature and 3.4% of the population was not interested to answer the question pertaining to this hypothesis. Three among the data collection should not be taken into account. There are many reasons they could have left that answer blank, including the possibility that they simply weren’t eager to answer the question.
Furthermore, as we know that violent scenarios from social media have detrimental effects on one’s mind, we hypothesized that certain regulatory bodies may be called upon to restrict the periphery of society to some extent. But, the data from the survey depicted that the majority think that posting various scenarios should be in the social media since, almost 45.23% of the population did not agree with the regulatory means on social media. On the contrary, other data were as follows: Affirmative to our hypothesis was 26.87% and not sure to support our hypothesis was 27.55%.
Last but not least, we also hypothesized that government may play role to take measures for restraining the social media. We thought that government control on social media can minimize the vibrant situation due to different opinions, which can disturb the social peace. However, there is a possibility that freedom of speech can be stiffened but, we came to this point for greater benefits of society. Nevertheless, we obtained ambiguous data from the survey as 39.11% people thought that it depends. Apart from that, 33.67% people agreed with our hypothesis and 26.87% people denied it. Only one person didn’t answer this question.
Discussion
In this paper, the main focus is to
discuss the probable impacts of social media in our daily lives based on the
perception of TTU students. Since, the demographic data showed approximately
50-50 percentages in male and female participants, the survey can be considered
fair enough with respect to gender. Besides, a few straightforward questions
were asked to the students to get the real picture and some of the students
enthusiastically commented on some of the questions. We carefully accepted
their comments and tried to analyze them. The subjects of discussion for this
paper are: role of social media to
change any social views, privacy violation by social media, mood altering
effect, psychological impact of social media etc. Along with these, I was
curious to know what TTU students thought about, whether: - the government
should regulate the social media or not.
In the first hypothesis, we were curious to know to what degree TTU students believed that, social media can be used as a tool for changing various social views. This topic was chosen; for a few reasons. Among them the important causes are: i) Students are thought to be the most rational thinker; ii) They are the future teachers and potential leaders; iii) there is an availability of diverse students in TTU campus etc. Additionally, they can work together for the overall development of the society and, can make other people aware of various social issues. So, we hypothesized that, students can connect with other people and share the actual picture of various problems and thus, social views can be changed. However, a large number of participants were more likely to agree upon this hypothesis, as; denser population in our statistics (around 62.57%) suggested that they were interested in using the social media as a tool for social change. It is clearly visible from the data that most TTU students supported the idea of using social media for any betterment of the society. This support depicted that these students are conscious about their duty and responsibilities to the society. The data also indicated the philanthropic nature of the TTU students. However, some of the students rarely used this feature and some of them never used this advantage of media (around 36.43%). This discrepancy in data (i.e. rarely or never used the social media for betterment) suggested that, some of the students might be unaware of social development or they were not much interested in this feature of social media.
In the second hypothesis, we were curious to know if social media hampered our privacy in daily life in terms of biography, relationship, work etc. This hypothesis was mainly intended for females, as we thought females might be the most vulnerable and the easiest target for the malevolent people who could disturb them by accessing their personal data. Besides, it has already been observed that our personal information is becoming easier to infringe day by day as, there are many malicious soft wares can propagate in our personal computers via social media, and hack our personal data along with freezing our computers. In this way, few malevolent people can take the advantage by black mailing us. Therefore, we hypothesized that social media can violate our personal privacy. However, the demographic data for this particular hypothesis demonstrated a very intriguing result, as; all the participants who firmly believed that social media infringed their personal life, were male. The females were on somewhat agreement with this hypothesis, which demonstrated to us that either the females were not too much bothered about their privacy violation or, they maintain their privacy always to some extent more than males. Nevertheless, this result opened an area to investigate whether, the males or females are more concerned about their personal privacy while using social media. Furthermore, 71.42% of participants were in agreement with our second hypothesis that social media can hamper our privacy by means of hacking our personal information. On the other hand, the rest of the people weren’t as they might not be totally bothered by the disturbance or they might not be frequent users of social media.
Afterwards, we proposed another hypothesis on the mood altering effect by various expressions used in social media (like: smile, sad, like etc.) and tried to investigate by questioning directly towards the participants. The main point behind this hypothesis was that some social networking sites remind us of our past memories like: the moment of hanging out with friends, marriage ceremony, any significant picture from any memorable tour, experience in parenthood etc. This can refresh our minds, if we see those after a long period. Hence, we were curious to know whether, the TTU students were aware of this or not. A greater density of population (i.e. 55.10%) in the survey demonstrated failure of this specific hypothesis. This failure suggested to us that TTU students were busier with other outdoor activities, rather than engaging in social media. Moreover, they might be more occupied with classes, studies and exams, such that they don’t get enough time to think about these features of social media. On the other hand, few among the population were not sure about this feature. This suggested us that these people were not too much concerned about this feature. Overall results illustrated to us that the students were more engaged with studies and other activities, so that; the use of expressions and being reminded of past memories don’t affect the students’ mind.
As, incidents of violence are increasing day by day, various violent events shared via social networks can damage our minds. It can increase our fear of the outside world, and, it may weaken us psychologically. Therefore, we thought that if certain regulatory bodies control the social media to some extent, it will lessen the psychological impact. On the contrary, it arises another question of restriction of free flow of information. If posting violent and dangerous scenarios are hindered, then, it will get difficult to get aware against the odds which, may inspire the miscreants to commit more dangerous deeds. Therefore, we tried to investigate the thoughtful opinions from TTU students about this control. Nevertheless, the statistics showed that TTU students argued with the social media control, as; 45.23% people didn’t agree and 27.55% people were not sure about this. However, this statistic may be problematic, as; these people might not be aware of what is going on in the outside world or they really don’t care about this. We were more confident about this hypothesis because of the increasing rate of psychological disease, heart disease etc. which has a correlation of these violent events according to the medical scientists. Nevertheless, we accepted TTU students’ opinion, as; they might think that if a regulatory body restrains the social media to share the violence, it was difficult for everyone to know about the odd situations. Therefore, we should have incorporated in our survey the question of if a regulatory body restricts, what should their limit be.
Since, social media eases the sharing of views and opinions of any person, the incidents of brawl are increasing day by day. In fact, in third world countries, excessive abuse of social media increased the events of brawling, and thus; fighting between groups. Hence, some governments were required to take measures to control social media by reducing the periphery. As an example: statistical data from last few years showed that. some governments allegedly restricted the access to Facebook (Facebook is very much popular in the third world countries) to calm down the state of commotion among people. However, this policy worked out there at that moment, but then there arises another question, to restrain the freedom of speech, which is not expected in a democratic country. Since, we made rigorous efforts to collect the insights of TTU students about what they really think of the government intervention on media; the survey showed that, TTU students are not sure about this government interference either, as only one third of the population agreed with it. Further, approximately 40% people thought that it depends and around 27% people rejected this hypothesis. This statistic suggested that most of the students were not supportive of government control, though a few peoples agreed with it. There might be a few reasons for this rejection. For instance: - government intervention inhibits the freedom of speech which, turns the government to being autocratic, and this is not totally desirable in a democratic country. Besides, sometimes the actual incidents can’t come out in light and bad people can take advantage of this. This may deteriorate the overall situation of the country. Moreover, if social media gets shut off, the connectivity among people was hurt. Nonetheless, our hypothesis requires more specific questions to delve into more insights from the TTU students.
Conclusion
Social media have become ingrained part of our life in such a way that we cannot even imagine in our daily life without it. Not only does it provide us information by means of news, but also; it has now become an excellent medium of networking, communication and medium of passing leisure time. Various features of social media are coming forth daily due to the growing demand of versatile utilities. However, it is not 100 percent beneficial to us. It has various detrimental impacts to us in terms of physical, psychological, and moral well-being. Hence, it is very much important to discuss those negative impacts of social media. That’s why a consensus was made in order to obtain thoughtful opinions from the TTU students to assess the various positive and negative sides of social media. Students were mainly focused, as; they are the potential leaders of the future, who; will help this world to prosper. There may be some drawbacks of this survey due to time constraint and unavailability of students from medical and law school. However, we believe that if sufficient resources were available e.g.: - time, money etc., then, it would be easier for us to compile more versatile statistical data set, which; could have reinforced our analysis more rigorously. Nevertheless, the collection of data was taken by means of survey and it was arrayed to evaluate the data statistically. From the social science aspect, the collection of data may be a glimpse, but; this survey demonstrated to us the insights of TTU students as, we assessed the opinions from the statistical point of view.
In this paper, we discussed some of the important hypotheses pertaining to social media and validated those by the opinions of TTU students. Their cognitive opinion validated some of the hypotheses and rejected a few of them. In addition, some of them added their own views, which; guided us to think about re-designing of some of the survey questions with the addition of different options. If certain constraints can be overcome (e.g.: time, money etc.), a versatile and rigorous survey could be conducted and based on that, rigorous statistical data could be afforded. It is recommended to concentrate more on the profession, age, ethnicity, gender etc. along with the numbers of population for the demographic data to obtain actual picture of the impacts of social media in our daily lives. However, the participants were very much enthusiastic to assist for the construction of the survey. Furthermore, we should bid thanks to our course instructor and teaching assistant for their valuable advice and suggestions to assess the TTU students’ data and proper apprehension of those data. In conclusion, this assessment would be helpful to anyone to optimize the usage of social media in their daily lives to get the maximum benefit from social media while lessening the negative impacts.
In the first hypothesis, we were curious to know to what degree TTU students believed that, social media can be used as a tool for changing various social views. This topic was chosen; for a few reasons. Among them the important causes are: i) Students are thought to be the most rational thinker; ii) They are the future teachers and potential leaders; iii) there is an availability of diverse students in TTU campus etc. Additionally, they can work together for the overall development of the society and, can make other people aware of various social issues. So, we hypothesized that, students can connect with other people and share the actual picture of various problems and thus, social views can be changed. However, a large number of participants were more likely to agree upon this hypothesis, as; denser population in our statistics (around 62.57%) suggested that they were interested in using the social media as a tool for social change. It is clearly visible from the data that most TTU students supported the idea of using social media for any betterment of the society. This support depicted that these students are conscious about their duty and responsibilities to the society. The data also indicated the philanthropic nature of the TTU students. However, some of the students rarely used this feature and some of them never used this advantage of media (around 36.43%). This discrepancy in data (i.e. rarely or never used the social media for betterment) suggested that, some of the students might be unaware of social development or they were not much interested in this feature of social media.
In the second hypothesis, we were curious to know if social media hampered our privacy in daily life in terms of biography, relationship, work etc. This hypothesis was mainly intended for females, as we thought females might be the most vulnerable and the easiest target for the malevolent people who could disturb them by accessing their personal data. Besides, it has already been observed that our personal information is becoming easier to infringe day by day as, there are many malicious soft wares can propagate in our personal computers via social media, and hack our personal data along with freezing our computers. In this way, few malevolent people can take the advantage by black mailing us. Therefore, we hypothesized that social media can violate our personal privacy. However, the demographic data for this particular hypothesis demonstrated a very intriguing result, as; all the participants who firmly believed that social media infringed their personal life, were male. The females were on somewhat agreement with this hypothesis, which demonstrated to us that either the females were not too much bothered about their privacy violation or, they maintain their privacy always to some extent more than males. Nevertheless, this result opened an area to investigate whether, the males or females are more concerned about their personal privacy while using social media. Furthermore, 71.42% of participants were in agreement with our second hypothesis that social media can hamper our privacy by means of hacking our personal information. On the other hand, the rest of the people weren’t as they might not be totally bothered by the disturbance or they might not be frequent users of social media.
Afterwards, we proposed another hypothesis on the mood altering effect by various expressions used in social media (like: smile, sad, like etc.) and tried to investigate by questioning directly towards the participants. The main point behind this hypothesis was that some social networking sites remind us of our past memories like: the moment of hanging out with friends, marriage ceremony, any significant picture from any memorable tour, experience in parenthood etc. This can refresh our minds, if we see those after a long period. Hence, we were curious to know whether, the TTU students were aware of this or not. A greater density of population (i.e. 55.10%) in the survey demonstrated failure of this specific hypothesis. This failure suggested to us that TTU students were busier with other outdoor activities, rather than engaging in social media. Moreover, they might be more occupied with classes, studies and exams, such that they don’t get enough time to think about these features of social media. On the other hand, few among the population were not sure about this feature. This suggested us that these people were not too much concerned about this feature. Overall results illustrated to us that the students were more engaged with studies and other activities, so that; the use of expressions and being reminded of past memories don’t affect the students’ mind.
As, incidents of violence are increasing day by day, various violent events shared via social networks can damage our minds. It can increase our fear of the outside world, and, it may weaken us psychologically. Therefore, we thought that if certain regulatory bodies control the social media to some extent, it will lessen the psychological impact. On the contrary, it arises another question of restriction of free flow of information. If posting violent and dangerous scenarios are hindered, then, it will get difficult to get aware against the odds which, may inspire the miscreants to commit more dangerous deeds. Therefore, we tried to investigate the thoughtful opinions from TTU students about this control. Nevertheless, the statistics showed that TTU students argued with the social media control, as; 45.23% people didn’t agree and 27.55% people were not sure about this. However, this statistic may be problematic, as; these people might not be aware of what is going on in the outside world or they really don’t care about this. We were more confident about this hypothesis because of the increasing rate of psychological disease, heart disease etc. which has a correlation of these violent events according to the medical scientists. Nevertheless, we accepted TTU students’ opinion, as; they might think that if a regulatory body restrains the social media to share the violence, it was difficult for everyone to know about the odd situations. Therefore, we should have incorporated in our survey the question of if a regulatory body restricts, what should their limit be.
Since, social media eases the sharing of views and opinions of any person, the incidents of brawl are increasing day by day. In fact, in third world countries, excessive abuse of social media increased the events of brawling, and thus; fighting between groups. Hence, some governments were required to take measures to control social media by reducing the periphery. As an example: statistical data from last few years showed that. some governments allegedly restricted the access to Facebook (Facebook is very much popular in the third world countries) to calm down the state of commotion among people. However, this policy worked out there at that moment, but then there arises another question, to restrain the freedom of speech, which is not expected in a democratic country. Since, we made rigorous efforts to collect the insights of TTU students about what they really think of the government intervention on media; the survey showed that, TTU students are not sure about this government interference either, as only one third of the population agreed with it. Further, approximately 40% people thought that it depends and around 27% people rejected this hypothesis. This statistic suggested that most of the students were not supportive of government control, though a few peoples agreed with it. There might be a few reasons for this rejection. For instance: - government intervention inhibits the freedom of speech which, turns the government to being autocratic, and this is not totally desirable in a democratic country. Besides, sometimes the actual incidents can’t come out in light and bad people can take advantage of this. This may deteriorate the overall situation of the country. Moreover, if social media gets shut off, the connectivity among people was hurt. Nonetheless, our hypothesis requires more specific questions to delve into more insights from the TTU students.
Conclusion
Social media have become ingrained part of our life in such a way that we cannot even imagine in our daily life without it. Not only does it provide us information by means of news, but also; it has now become an excellent medium of networking, communication and medium of passing leisure time. Various features of social media are coming forth daily due to the growing demand of versatile utilities. However, it is not 100 percent beneficial to us. It has various detrimental impacts to us in terms of physical, psychological, and moral well-being. Hence, it is very much important to discuss those negative impacts of social media. That’s why a consensus was made in order to obtain thoughtful opinions from the TTU students to assess the various positive and negative sides of social media. Students were mainly focused, as; they are the potential leaders of the future, who; will help this world to prosper. There may be some drawbacks of this survey due to time constraint and unavailability of students from medical and law school. However, we believe that if sufficient resources were available e.g.: - time, money etc., then, it would be easier for us to compile more versatile statistical data set, which; could have reinforced our analysis more rigorously. Nevertheless, the collection of data was taken by means of survey and it was arrayed to evaluate the data statistically. From the social science aspect, the collection of data may be a glimpse, but; this survey demonstrated to us the insights of TTU students as, we assessed the opinions from the statistical point of view.
In this paper, we discussed some of the important hypotheses pertaining to social media and validated those by the opinions of TTU students. Their cognitive opinion validated some of the hypotheses and rejected a few of them. In addition, some of them added their own views, which; guided us to think about re-designing of some of the survey questions with the addition of different options. If certain constraints can be overcome (e.g.: time, money etc.), a versatile and rigorous survey could be conducted and based on that, rigorous statistical data could be afforded. It is recommended to concentrate more on the profession, age, ethnicity, gender etc. along with the numbers of population for the demographic data to obtain actual picture of the impacts of social media in our daily lives. However, the participants were very much enthusiastic to assist for the construction of the survey. Furthermore, we should bid thanks to our course instructor and teaching assistant for their valuable advice and suggestions to assess the TTU students’ data and proper apprehension of those data. In conclusion, this assessment would be helpful to anyone to optimize the usage of social media in their daily lives to get the maximum benefit from social media while lessening the negative impacts.
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Appendix A: Copy of
Survey Questions for Social Media
Thank you for filling out our survey! (Social Media, Parental Leave, Black Lives
Matter)
Demographic Questions:
1.
___
Undergraduate ____Graduate ____ Faculty/Staff/Other
2.
___
Male ____Female
3.
Age
____ 18-22 ____ 23-28 ____ 29 or more
4.
Where
are you from, originally? ___
Texas ___ USA, not TX ___international
5.
Do
you have a child/ children? ___ Yes
___ No
Survey Questions on Social Media
1- Do
you use social media as a tool for social change? For example, sharing news,
film, or an article that you think is important for promoting social awareness
regarding an issue?
___ Often ___
Sometimes ___ Rarely ____ Never ___
N/A don’t know
2- How much do you think social
media helps you to have a dialogue with the people you don't know? ___ meet a lot of people I didn’t know
___ sometimes ___ doesn’t
help/rarely ___ N/A
3- Do you
think social media has a positive impact on your social life or a negative
impact?
___ positive ____
negative ____ N/A, not sure, no impact Why?
4. How long do you
use social media each day?
____ > 4 hrs/day ___
>2 hrs/day ____>1 hr/day ____ >1/2 hr/day ____ <1/2 hr/day
5. If
you were allowed to use only one social media application what would it be?
___ Facebook
___ Snapchat ___ LinkedIn ___ Instagram ___Twitter ___ Any other ____________
6.
What
is the social media tool you most frequently use every day?
___ Facebook ___ Instagram ___ Twitter ___ other:
__________________________________
7. What is your passion for using social media
applications?
___
Checking news ___ Making new
friends ___ Shopping ___ Other: _______________________
8. Are
you worried about personal privacy being compromised in social media?
___ Yes ___ No
___ A little
9.
Should the
government take to protect the personal privacy in social media?
___ Yes ___ No ___ It depends
10. Do “likes” or lack of them alter your mood? ___
Yes ___ No ___ Not sure ___
N/A, Never use
11. When reading posts on social media,
would you rather use simple “likes” and facial expressions to give posters
feedback instead of detailed feelings and comments?
___ Yes
___ No ___ It depends N/A,
Never use social media
12. When socializing online, do you find memories are easier
to recall when social media posts previous photos and events?
___ Yes ___ No ___ N/A, Never
use social media
13. Do you like it when Facebook posts my “memories” or old
posts. ___ Yes ___ No ___ not sure/NA
14. Do you think posting violent
scenarios in social media sites is controlled enough?
___ Yes ____ No _____ Not sure/N/A
15. What is your opinion about using social media during the
class for non-class purposes? (choose the best) ___
always do ___ do & think it’s ok ___ do but it’s bad ___ try to avoid it
16. Do you think social media can be
helpful for better studies? ___ Yes
____ No
If yes, how does it help?
17. Do you use social media to help you remember things to
do every day? ___ Yes ___ No
18. How do you respond to conflicts
in social media? __
Avoid ___ Stir up ___ Work for peace
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