The use of social media and its impact on Texas Tech University community
Abhishek Kumar
Abstract This paper discusses the use of social
media and its effects. The class of ESL 5315 Academic Writing (Fall 2016)
conducted a survey across the Texas Tech University campus by asking random
people to fill out a questionnaire. The informants included undergraduates,
graduates, faculty and staff members from Tech. This survey helped us to
validate our five hypotheses made previously. The results of our survey give
some interesting findings of the role of social media in the lives of people,
privacy concerns and its use in studies. We found that undergraduates are more
into social media than graduates and faculty. Texans have a mixed opinion of
personal privacy on social media being controlled by the government.
Keywords: government intervention, privacy, social media, Texas Tech University, undergraduate
Keywords: government intervention, privacy, social media, Texas Tech University, undergraduate
Introduction We represent a group of Academic
Writing class from Texas Tech University, Lubbock. To be more precise, we are
ESL-5315-002-Academic Writing. This class aims at preparing non-native speakers
of English for graduate-level academic writing. Texas Tech University, often
referred to as Texas Tech, Tech or TTU, is a public research university in
Lubbock, Texas. Located in West Texas, TTU has students from all over the
United States and over a hundred countries. Texas Tech is known for providing
education in science, medicine, business, government studies, sports and
entertainment. Here, we are trying to study Texas Tech University students’
perception of social media. How has social media evolved? How has social media
affected their lives? Are they too much dependent on social media? Is it making
the world a better place? Are they aware of the pros and cons of these
communication media? Do they even care? There
is a lot of excitement among our academic writing group, who are studying
social media, to see how the Tech community feels about it. A wide variety of
perceptions about social media were posted by the group members. Some of the
noticeable issues were addiction to social media amongst students and
professionals. Social media users spend almost 12 hours a week of their
productive time (Holmes, 2015). It has become a common practice to use social
media at workplaces. Is it fair to do so? Another question which we expect the
Tech community to have an opinion on is how social media has affected their
lives. We are curious to know how they feel about the role of social media in
their lives. Do they feel happy about using social media by getting connected
to people and showing their presence? Do they feel guilty of using social media
for hours and in the end realize that they have wasted their valuable time? Or
they do not care about all those materials flowing over social media? Furthermore, we as a group are interested in
knowing how Tech students and staff feel about the privacy issues related to
social media. This is a matter of concern all over the world as over the years
we individuals have leaked too much information over the internet. From
personal life to bank account details, all our data has been released for
accessing. Have we taken our safety and security for granted? Personally, I am
interested in whether Tech community plans to use social media effectively to
benefit their career. What percentage of them will do so? In what ways can they
use their wide base of friends and contacts to improve their career? Answers to
these are somewhere hidden in what fraction of students use LinkedIn.
Literature
Review One of the first and foremost problems
that needs analysis is the level of addiction social media has created over the
years. A student is expected to devote most of his or her time on learning
concepts and engaging themselves in extracurricular activities. In terms of
socialization, it is expected that students be outspoken and interact with
people face to face. Our communication skills are highly dependent on such
actions. Instead students these days are seen hanging around with their phones
everywhere as if these applications control their lives. Being students, we
should not disregard our learning hours and waste them on social media
(Karadkar, 2015). We should not allow social media to dictate our time
management skills. With growing
popularity of existing social media platforms and launching of new
communication media it is not long before students will be spending 5-7 hours
daily on social media (it is ironic because those were the number of hours I
used to spend in high school as a student). The survey will help us find out
whether undergraduates are more into social media than graduates. Are men more
likely to admit their addiction to social media or women? Which age group feels
social media is taking too much of one’s time?
It will be interesting to see how Texas Tech students react to this
problem. Secondly,
deterioration of mental health among the new generation is observed with the
growing use of social media. A lot of studies, including the one performed by
Ottawa Public Health, are proof of this (Gregoire, 2015). Sharing awareness
about this issue on social media by mental health representatives can
significantly reduce the problem (Gregoire, 2015). Personally, I have a feeling
that this method won’t be effective, as thousands of such health awareness
posts are shared hourly without any noticeable result. One of the prime reasons
for using social media is to find relief from boredom and self-distraction.
Insecure and anxious people are more frequently using social networking sites
(Honor, 2015). Social media creates a
virtual world that is entirely dramatic and different from the real world
(Karadkar, 2015). Social media helps people to create an identity they want to
have by sitting in front of a desktop. A big question is whether students will
admit that such identity crisis affects their mood, thus disturbing them
mentally and affecting them physically. Will true addicts have trouble in
admitting any problem at all? An opinion from Tech staff and students can be
thought-provoking. It will be interesting as we have to look at the numbers
carefully to figure this out. "Be
aware it is a space that is watched," says social psychologist Ilka
Gleibs, an assistant professor at the London School of Economics (Jayson, 2014).
Our audience is always bigger than we realize. The moment we share any news,
make any comment, like any social article, follow any page or make any such
move, we are exposing ourselves to the cyber world of crime. Though cyber security
is making significant progress in the field of computer science, hackers are
also using technologies to crack the servers to get hold of the data. Data is
scattered all over the internet space and every social media user is in the
domain of threat. Recently Facebook offered the service of online money
transfer to anyone in your friend list. The users just need to update their
bank account details and money gets transferred in a fraction of a second.
Umpteen applications and web pages over the internet ask for your social media
information. By linking your social media details to these sites you have
unknowingly released a huge chunk of data to third parties. We do not care
about data privacy, but these leaks happening globally can have serious consequences
we can’t even think of. Is it time the government should take control of our
security in this social domain? Do young people believe social media privacy is
a matter of concern? Are graduates more or less worried than undergraduates? Analysis of the survey will help us know if
Texans feel any different from Non-Texans on social media privacy. It is
important to see how the Texas Tech community thinks about it. Given
a chance, I would like to study the views of Texas Tech students and staff on
social media as a tool for networking. Is it fair that social media, which
helps us connect to old friends, family, relatives and colleagues, should be
used to build our network? Mark Zuckerberg had sent friend requests to 35
people in his university. Now, Facebook is a gigantic social media site which
caters to over a billion people. There is a lot of potential in social media
and companies can make extra millions if they leverage on it (Holmes, 2015).
For instance, LinkedIn is a medium which can be best used to communicate with our customers, provide services and
get feedback (Holmes, 2015). There are
chances that Tech students between the ages of 18-22 will not really care about
these issues. But these are important issues which require a demographic study.
Texans are business-minded people, so an opinion on this issue can be
interesting.
Hypotheses
- · A majority of undergraduate Texas Tech students will deny that social media is affecting their studies. They would feel hesitant to admit that social media is affecting one’s grades. They will be the ones using social media more than 2 hours a day.
- · Tech students who use social media during class for non-class purposes and think that is ok use social media more than 2 hours a day. Tech students who always use social media during class for non-class purposes use it more than 4 hours a day.
- · Texas Tech students are concerned about social media privacy but would not want it to be under government control. The general stereotype is that Texans do not favor government control in most of the matters. Non-Texans and international students will be concerned about privacy and won’t mind government taking steps to protect personal privacy.
- · Graduate students use LinkedIn more widely than undergraduates to stay connected with people belonging to their area of research. Often undergraduates are known to have a laid-back temperament compared to graduates who are generally serious about their careers. To support this hypothesis, we will have data on their level of education as well as age. Personally, I am curious to know and study this group of people.
- · Snapchat is the most popular social media among Tech students and females are more addicted to it than males. This hypothesis is a speculation based on my observation of Texas Tech students over a year in campus, buses, halls and other hangout places.
Results Based on
the data collected from the survey conducted at Texas Tech University, the
following results were computed. We then analyzed the data by comparing it to
the previously made hypotheses. The demographic details are mentioned in the
Methods section. Our
first hypothesis suggested that there would be a higher percentage of
undergraduate Texas Tech students who agreed that social media does not affect
their academic work. We believed that Texas Tech students would be of the
opinion that social media does not impede their education and learning and in
turn does not affect their respective grades. From our calculations, we found
that majority of undergraduate students use social media during the class for
non-class purposes (Figure 1). Of
the students who use social media during lecture hours, more than half are of
the opinion that there is nothing wrong in doing that. To corroborate their
act, 56.18% of undergraduates are of the opinion that social media can be
helpful for studies. Only 11% of the undergrads gave a reason when asked for in
one of our survey questions as to how social media is helpful for studies (Figure 2). Absence of an explanation
raises question why this group of people is hesitant to admit that social media
affects their study routine. The level of addiction among this group can be
seen, as 77.77% of them use social media more than an hour every day (Figure 3). Our second hypothesis proposed that
the Texas Tech Community would be of the general opinion that using social
media forums made them feel happy. We believed that social media would have a
positive impact in their life and help them have a cheerful mind. Results of
the survey were in agreement with the above mentioned hypothesis. Of the 294
informants who took the survey, only 15.3% were of the opinion that social
media had a negative impact on their life (Figure
4). A new feature in Facebook allows us to post our social media memories
through a video. Facebook gives an option of sharing memories with people on
your friend list when we complete five years of online friendship with someone.
Analysis of the survey suggested that a majority of people have made social
media a part of their lives for years and feel happy to share the pictures down
the memory lane. We found 3 out of 10 users who did not feel comfortable about
this recent application.
The
third hypothesis claimed that Texas Tech students and staff were concerned
about social media privacy but would not want it to be under government
control. We suspected that Texans did
not favor governmental control in most matters as it is the general stereotype.
People had a mixed opinion when it came to registering their views on social
media privacy. 36.64% of the Tech community was worried about personal privacy
being compromised in social media. Another 35.27% of informants were a little
concerned on this matter. 28.08% of the people were not bothered about their
personal privacy getting affected. From the results of Figure 5, we can conclude that our hypothesis wasn’t confirmed. We
expected a vast majority of students to show concern in this cyber issue. It
was a coincidence that another part of the hypothesis also saw the mixed
opinion of Texas Tech University. When asked about their opinion of government
control of such matters, 33.79% felt that government should take steps to
protect users’ personal privacy. Meanwhile, 29.96% were not in the favor of
government control and 39.25% thought that it depended on certain criteria (Figure 6). The most interesting
feature of our hypothesis was to find how Texans feel about government control.
Of the 191 Texans who took the survey, only 29.84% of them were against
government control. This was not as bad as we thought the general stereotype
was. Of the 60 Non-Texan Americans who filled out the survey, a mere 21.66%
were against government control. To see how Texans feel about government
intervention in other matters we analyzed their response for Parental Leave. Of
the 189 Texans who did the survey on Parental Leave, 52.38% were of the opinion
that a parental leave policy be made and mandated by the government. To be
precise, 54.23% Non-Texans were in favor of a government policy compared to
52.38% of Texans. Again, the numbers disagree with our hypothesis of Texans
being wary of the involvement of government in any matter. The result says that
Texans do not think differently from Non-Texans at least for the above two
issues.
Our
fourth hypothesis stated that graduate students would report using LinkedIn
more widely than undergraduates. In order to stay connected with people
belonging to their area of research, we assumed that Graduate students were
more into LinkedIn than undergrads. Often undergrads are known to have a
laid-back temperament compared to graduates who are serious about their career
goals. Of the 82 graduate students who filled out the survey, only 5 had
LinkedIn as their top social media application. Although there were not enough
hard numbers, it was sufficient to justify our hypothesis with the small data.
None of the undergraduates considered LinkedIn as their favorite social media
tool.
Our final hypothesis was that
Snapchat was the most popular social media among Tech students and females used
it more than males. Our speculation was based on the general observation of
Texas Tech students on campus, and in buses, halls and other hangout places.
Clearly, the results of the survey were not in accordance with the hypothesis,
as Facebook turned to be the most popular social media site. Only 17% of
informants chose Snapchat over all other social media (Figure 7). It was the second most popular social media, followed
by Twitter and Instagram giving it a close fight. Of all those who registered
Snapchat as their favorite social media application, 52% were females and the
rest were males. The hypothesis failed, as the numbers were not high enough to
show that females are more into Snapchat as compared to males.
In
general, the survey results have proved our belief that the TTU community feels
that social media altogether has brought a positive impact on their lives. Most
of them use social media for more than an hour every day. Facebook is by far
the favorite social media application amongst all age groups. The passion
behind using social media every day is to get updated with the news. Though
students are slightly worried about their personal privacy in social media,
they had mixed opinions on government taking steps to control their privacy.
Students did feel it is not bad to use social media in class for non-class
purposes, and social media can be helpful for better studies.
Discussion
Discussion
In this
research and analysis, our intention was to study the perception of Texas Tech
University students, staff and faculty on the use of social media. For this, we
conducted a survey in which random informants were asked to give their opinion
on the subject.
An
important study of our research was to see how the Texas Tech students felt
about social media affecting their overall academic performance. More than half
of the undergrads were of the opinion that social media can be an aid for
studies. A majority of undergrads felt that there was nothing wrong in using
social media in class for non-class purposes. Only one-tenth of this crowd
answered the question as to how it can be helpful to create an environment for
studies. This clearly reflects that students avoided the question because they did
not have any explanation for their act.
Another
important observation of the study was to figure how the Tech community felt
about government control of social media. Our goal was to delve deeper and
understand the thought process of Texans when it came to government taking
steps to control matters. Texas Tech University students had a mixed opinion on
supervision of government. Nearly one-third were in favor of government control
and another one-third was against government interference. The rest were of the
opinion that the intervention of government depends on a number of other
factors. Contrary to our stated hypothesis, only 30% of the Texans were against
government taking steps to protect our personal privacy. Though it was higher
than the Non-Texan states (two out of every 10 were against government control),
our general stereotype of Texans being wary of government involvement was
proved wrong. We feel that the question prior to the government control one was
on how much people are worried about their personal privacy being compromised
in social media. This question in some way might have influenced the
informants, who wanted steps to be taken for protection of their personal
privacy from the world of cybercrime. As
part of this experimental study we could have asked the questions in a
different order and see if Texans still came out about the same as others. This
might have affected the current results.
Also, we could ask more or different questions to get better information
about their worries about privacy. One such question can be; do you feel wary
about government intervention in public matters?
We
thought that Snapchat would be the most popular social media application
amongst the Tech students and that girls in general would be more addicted to
it. Our survey results suggested that Snapchat was the second most popular
social media and its users were equally distributed among male and females. We
feel this result could have varied if the sample size of our survey was
increased. A general observation is that Snapchat, being trendier than other
social media applications, is a frequently used tool amongst the students all
across the campus. The concept of making a video or image story for oneself,
which expires in 24 hours, has attracted lot of college students all over the
country.
The class of ESL
5315 Academic Writing (Fall 2016) did their best to conduct the research study
across the campus in order to make the results consistent and helpful. In my
opinion, there were a lot of areas that, if worked on, could have improved our
research study. Firstly, there were not enough participants due to the
stipulated amount of time given to conduct the survey. We had close to 300
informants for our survey, which is a small percentage of the number of
students going to Tech. In my opinion, six to eight weeks of time should have
been spent in data collection around this huge Texas Tech campus. Significant
amount of data collected would have given a more dependable trend and made our
results more reliable. Secondly, the data reflected the mindset of the youth as
most of our informants were students. To be precise, 89.15% of the total participants
were less than 28 years old. Our results would have been more dynamic had we
included people from all walks of life, especially participants who weren’t
from academia. Thirdly, our questionnaire had its own little drawbacks. It was
not well-organized and needed a bit of formatting. The questions could have
been rephrased so that it made more clarity to the informants. For issues like
Parental Leave, additional information could have been given to make the
subject clear. The Google spreadsheet had its own downsides. For instance, if
two students from the class were filling a row at the same time, there was
possible loss of data due to overlapping. We made sure such a thing did not
happen by assigning all the students with specific cells in the spreadsheet. Keeping in mind all its
limitations, the research study still gave us an insight and opinion of usage
of social media amongst the Texas Tech community.
Conclusion
Conclusion
Our
survey was mainly dedicated to the Americans’ point of view regarding the use
of social media. We found that Texas Tech community are using social media on a
regular basis. Most of our informants used social media for a minimum of an
hour every day. In general, using social media has resulted in a positive
impact in the lives of most of the students across the campus. According to the
literature review, a lot of studies reported that the grades suffer with the
use of social media among the students. Analysis of our survey suggest that many
students did not recognize this fact. A general stereotype is that Texans
oppose governmental control in public matters. This hypothesis was not true in
our survey results as Texans had a mixed review on government taking steps to
protect personal privacy in social media. Facebook, by far, was the most
popular social media among the students at Tech. Although the result of our
survey was not sufficient enough to substantially conclude how social media
affected the lives of students, it gives some basic idea of the opinion these
students hold about social media. I would like to thank Professor Thomas
Leverett for playing a valuable role in designing this experimental study and
Achintha Bandara, our teaching assistant, for his consistent effort throughout
the research.
Appendix A
Appendix A
Appendix
B
Graphs
for Results
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3
Figure 4
Figure 5
Figure 6
Figure 7
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