Social media seems to exist everywhere as people of all ages utilize different forms of social networks to their own personal advantages. In order to get a grasp on the personal opinions and benefits of people using social media, I conducted a survey to see what people really think about social media and how it has had an impact on their daily lives. I interviewed ten people with the demographics of various ages between 16 and 50 years old. Seven of the interviews were with males and the remaining three were females.
The first thing I noticed after conducting the interviews is that 9/10 people that I interviewed had something in common, a facebook account. Out of all ten interviewees, only one person mentioned Myspace and explained that they had used this website in the past; but they currently prefer the Facebook interface over Myspace because it is simpler. The average amount of years that the surveyed social media users have remained active is approximately 4.4 years. I also averaged the time spent daily on social media websites for all ten interviews which resulted in 1.9 hours. The highest range of hours spent on social networks resulted in four hours a day, and the lowest was only a half an hour daily. Among the interviews, the most common amount of hours spent on social media was approximately one hour per day. I found that younger social media users generally use social networks for personal purposes to connect with friends from school or to meet new friends. A 21-year-old social media user that I interviewed reminisced about his days in high school using social networks and explained, “In high school, I got better grades because it was easier to contact classmates about homework, projects, tests, ect.” On the other hand, most of the adult users that were interviewed seemed to find social media useful for both personal and professional use. The personal use for adults was to keep in touch with family and friends that they already have, and their professional use was to promote themselves or their own product or service. A 30-year-old Twitter and Facebook user that I interviewed claims that social media has changed his life in a significant way because he is a photographer and social networks allow him to showcase his work, and in return receive work from it. “Social media helps keep me connected to the happenings all over Tampa or wherever I happen to be.” He stated, “I know what event to be at and when.” The most common answer among the interviewees when asked if they have gained any new skills with the help of social media, most reported that it helped to improve their typing skills in terms of speed and accuracy.
The opinions of the ten people I interviewed varied on the subject of the negative effects of being so digitally connected. A couple of people said that they did not see any negatives and one explained that it is a necessity to obtain the responsibly keep it in balance with your daily schedule. Some users expressed that being so digitally connected ultimately consumes people’s lives and that social media users tend to use social networks in place of the real thing (face to face conversation). Others expressed fear that social media makes it easy for people to stalk one another with all of the written information that is recorded, and the fact that some social media websites have GPS integration, it has the possibility to get worse.
People of all ages can benefit from using social media in many different ways even if there are a few negatives that coincide, and as technology with virtual interaction rapidly advances, who can guess what the future will hold.
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