Research Paper Proposal
Social media became widespread phenomenon in the second half of 2000s. Social networks like Facebook or Twitter quickly became popular globally: e.g. the total number of people using Facebook at least once per month reached 1.6 billion in 2015 (Statista, 2016). Therefore, due to their vast popularity, social media generated a number of positive and negative effects influencing the society, which are interesting to analyze.
During the first years of social media existence public attention was mainly focused on positive side of social media usage, on the opportunities which humanity had never had before. But later in 2010s, when social media popularity became enormous, first studies regarding negative effects of social media appeared. It became clear, that social networks, if used improperly, can cause serious harm in many aspects: social, economic, psychological, mental and many others.
Thus, one can see that the topic proposed for research is controversial and needs to be carefully studied. It is obvious, that today the gap between opinion of supporters and opponents of social media influence on society is too big. For this reason, the balanced approach to social media effects will be put forward in this research.
According to the general scheme of the research, in the first part of the paper analysis of both positive and negative effects of social media will be performed.
It will be shown that it generally depends upon the personality of a user, whether negative or positive effect of social media will predominate – because paradoxically the reasons of any social networks influence on a person and society are mostly the same and refer to concepts, on which social media are based.
The paper will be based on two groups of source information: the articles and the studies published in mass media and multiple-question survey of University students regarding the problems discussed in this research.
Analysis of positive social media impact will include high speed of communication between people, building bridges over multicultural communication barriers, stimulation of participation in local communities, opportunities for writers and other creative to express their ideas to the whole world, better communication between teenagers and their parents etc. It will be conducted basing on the publications in such media as TechBead, LinkedIn Pulse, Teen Vogue and others.
Negative influence of social media will include such issues as depression and self-esteem problems, overvaluation of personal opinion and narcissism (Swanbrow, 2013), excessive time commitment on work or education due to social networks improper usage, privacy diminishment, suppression of critical thinking capability (Taylor, 2011), money overspending (Weisbaum, 2012), health problems like eating disorder due to food photo-taking (Kingkade, 2013).
It is also important to state that impact of social media on big companies’ marketing practices is not the subject of this paper. The focus will be made on the social influence on society in general and a person as a part of this society. Research on marketing and economic influence of social media may be conducted during the next semester.
Actuality of all the cases mentioned above in students’ environment will be checked via survey. It will be conducted using several methods simultaneously: live interviews with students at University campus, survey papers distributed in University and online surveys in social networks groups connected with University. Agreement with University administration on placing survey in main University page in Facebook has already been reached.
References
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Rosen, L. (2013, September 22). You Don't Need a Digital Detox: You Just Need to Learn to Set Limits and Boundaries. Huffpost Tech. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-larry-rosen/you-dont-need-a-digital-d_b_3637031.html.
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