Social media: a disconnect from reality?

By Judson Gourley

Before getting in to the findings of this brief study I feel it is relevant to go over the demographics of those interviewed. Of the 10 people interviewed, six were male and four were female. They were all between the ages of 19-21 years old.

 

Millennials have grown up in a time where Social Media sites where just beginning to keep up and as such, have been using them in some form since a very early age. Everyone I interviewed said that they’d been using SM since either their 7th or 8th grade year of high school or, to put it another way, for about seven years. Of those interviewed, 80% said their first use of SM was with myspace.

Every single person I interviewed has a Facebook and say they spend on average about two hours a day on it. Only three of the people interviewed were on Twitter, with the average time per day spent on it being one hour. Every person interviewed said that they multitask while using SM, and they all stated that they primarily use SM while at their home. Only 40% said that they use their phone to access and manage SM. The top three activities performed while on Facebook are as follows: seeing what friends are doing, sharing links of things found on the internet and lurking peoples’ profiles.

The general consensus was that the best benefit of using SM was the ability to keep up with friends and family who don’t live near you quickly and easily. This answer was given by 80% of those interviewed. As for the biggest dislike of SM, most people believe that SM is too intrusive on their private lives. There is a lot of concern over potential employers accessing Facebook accounts and finding out things that would preferably kept private.

The only new skill learned by people I interviewed was that their typing skills improved. Whether or not people had developed new relationships while using SM was spilt down the middle. Half of those interviewed said that SM had helped them strengthen relationships with recent acquaintances through the use of the Facebook chat feature and by sharing links via wall post.

The most interesting thing I found was that ever person interviewed agreed that the most negative aspects of SM is either a perceived lack of privacy or that it feigns real human interaction and creates a false sense of connection. As one person put it, “the social experience is simulated on the internet, and reduces the need (and in some individuals, the desire) for a real social experience and thus results in a serious loss of humanity in extreme cases.”