Social media: it's an obsession

By Angela Moneck

I interviewed 13 people for this social media survey, nine girls and four boys. The youngest person taking the survey is 19 and the oldest is 25. After studying the surveys, I think the age of these people shows a lot about young adults when it comes to social media. I think I would have gotten completely different results if I interviewed more adults.

 

The interviewees have been using social networking sites for between five to eight years. Some of them mentioned that their first social networking site was Xanga. One of the females said that her first experience with social networking was a website like Teen Open Diary, which was similar to Live Journal.

Only two of the 13 people use Twitter. Of those two, they don’t spend very much time on Twitter. Only a few said they still use MySpace. One person still uses it for about an hour a day, but most said they only use it a couple minutes a day, once a month, or once a year. Every person who was interviewed said they use Facebook. Some said they use it for several hours a day. Most subjects claimed to use social networking all throughout the day, anywhere and any time. One even admitted to using it in the car. Another person said they use it “anywhere I can get signal.”

Every person who was interviewed said they multitask while using the social networking sites. They do anything from video chatting to playing games to doing homework while on sites such as Facebook.

Two people said that they like Facebook for the event aspect of it. They are able to create events, see who is going, and then either attend or not. One of the males said he likes Facebook because he can get up-to-date news that may not have even been on T.V. yet. Three of the 13 people use social media for professional reasons; the rest use it strictly for personal reasons. One of the interviewees uses it to network himself and to get people to be interested in his artwork. When asked about the pros of social media sites such as Facebook, there were many different, but also similar, answers. All 13 people said they like social media because it allows them to connect with people, some they wouldn’t have otherwise connected with. One person said she likes it because she can post a status if she needs help on something, and people are “more than glad to help out.” One person said he likes Facebook because it’s something to do when he’s bored.

The interviewees also pointed out several negative aspects of social media. All of them mentioned the subject of privacy. One person said Facebook causes her to watch what she says more than she would otherwise. One subject said that it is the users’ choice to decide what to post and what not to post when it comes to privacy. The topic of employment came up in several surveys. One person said his only rule to social media is not to be friends with a current co-worker because it will “ruin your employment.” Another person said she didn’t think it’s right that employers can log on to the same social networks and study you before hiring you. Some said that using social media sites causes the actual physical connection between people to be lost. Two people said the sites can cause obsession. One person elaborated by saying, “It seems to consume peoples live to the fact to where they grow fake crops to sell for fake money and they spend real money on things that don’t even exist... so yeah, I see that as a problem.”Two said that the sites are very time consuming. One of the females said she disliked that it can allow a significant other to inappropriately talk with someone else. One person mentioned that they didn’t like Facebook chat because it didn’t always work correctly. Another person said that she wishes the social media sites would be combined into one big site and that it allows people to worry about others, causing them to be upset about their own lives. One person mentioned that while Facebook has been going through changes, they altered their “like” pages to be more of something you would say when talking to a friend, as opposed to just “liking” a particular band. She also said that the internet and social media has changed education because colleges and professors rely on it for the students to do work.

Four of the 13 interviewees said that social networking has changed their lives, but I think I would argue that, at least in a small aspect, it has changed all of our lives.