by: Rizelle Jane Lu & Michael Purisima
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Interactions in social media.
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Social networking sites (SNS) are gradually emerging from time to time. As of July 2014, a total percentage of 98 percent of 18 to 24 year olds had already used social media. The leader of all social networking sites is currently Facebook with over 1.4 billion users (Statistic Brain, 2014). Facebook is one of the most addicting social networking sites. Active users of Facebook check their accounts more than five times a day. In a recent study conducted by IDC, the global provider of market, about 25 percent of smartphone owners ages 18 to 44 say that they couldn’t remember the time where their smartphone wasn’t with them. Social media can become a compulsive behavior in its users (Sperry, 2014). In some studies, nearly half of teens report feeling “addicted” to their phones and about 20 percent feel addicted to social media that could lead to digital peer pressure (Elements Behavioral Health, n.d.). The addiction of users in using social media could affect one’s self-perception.
Social media could affect the users’ self-perception. We Heart It, a social networking site reported by Time conducted a survey where they gathered 5,000 female social media users ages 13 to 24. We Heart it discovered that there is a deep cruelty among teenage girls and women in online communities, about 66 percent experienced being bullied on Facebook, while 19 percent experienced being bullied on Twitter, and 9 percent were bullied on Instagram (Sass, 2014). This shows that bullying has entered the cyber world, and users of social media can be bullied easily that could cause the users to feel depressed or unease. Cyber bullying also causes one to be anxious and stressed. Online cruelty can be even worse than face-to-face threatening because it is hard to find out when it is in social media (Elements Behavioral Health, n.d.). Bullying in social media could be worst than actual bullying, for in social media anyone can bash continuously and the bashers may be anonymous. Australian National University’s National Institute for Mental Health Research conducted a study regarding cyber bullying. They analyzed from Weibo, a Chinese version of Twitter, that people who use social media late at night are much more likely to suffer from depression (Sass, 2014). This is another study that explains that one can be depressed not only through cyber bullying but also using social media late at night.
Social media could cause digital peer pressure to its users. In the Journal of Adolescent Health there is a previous study examined the behavior of 1500 teens in Los Angeles from the impact of social media posts, and they found out that users who often browse images of their peers partying more probable to imitate the behavior through drinking and smoking by themselves. Digital peers are proven more influential than a teen’s real life friends (Maypole, 2013). The digital peer pressure in social media can trigger individuals to follow what they see, thus making them to do similar thing. The severe depression and pressure brought by social media provoke users to change one’s identity.
This blog entry could also be found in my partner's blog: League of Bloggers
This is a good topic to tackle. I just feel though that the post is like a reseacrh, complete with all the citations (which, by the way, is good and the right way to do a paper). However, the blog itself centers on a range of topics that lean more on the lighter spectrum. The title alone sounds pretty heavy when you can draw people to read more of the work if it had been worded to suit the level of your target readers.
ReplyDeleteDo a little of proofreading as well for some awkward sentences and minor errors in grammar. Thank you.