research

Social media holds out the promise of connection. Looking at platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram among others, people of different ages, gender and race create networks of friends which helps to get updates on daily activities and build a sense of community. On such a platform as Facebook, it’s usual that a person will have hundreds of friends connected to. However, this is different from real life where a person has very few friends who can be relied on. Many people including Pope Francis and singer Selena Gomez have always warned people on spending too much time on social media by refereeing to it as detrimental (Hunter 2019). Pope Francis argues that it’s not healthy to rely on the internet to know what’s happening in the world but instead people should walk door to door and talk to each other.

On the contrary, young people have argued that social media provides a real connection. Research showed that social media was helpful to kids as they can connect, share and learn online. Sites such as twitter shed light on kids on the important issues across the world as well as exposing them to people from different parts. This enlightens their thoughts as they respond positively to such tweets. Social media helps teens strengthen friendship, get a sense of belonging and have online acceptance (Kampf 2018). The purpose of this research is to investigate if social media made people more or less connected having in mind all the arguments on the positive and negative impacts of social media.

Understanding whether social media made people more or less connected is a concept that requires thorough research as the pros and cons outweigh each other. Considering the advantages of social media, we find that people can find and meet online; business people can reach clients directly without the involvement of third-party, advertising, and search engine optimization on companies is made easier. On the disadvantages, social media leads to cheating and relationship issues, deaths as people to copy what they see on the internet, drugs and alcohol abuse among other things. To clearly understand the effect of social media on people’s connectivity, more research needs to be done on the users of the internet.

This research project is purposely made for teens and young adults who are mostly involved in social media. Despite social media being a platform for everyone even the children, young adults and teens are the victims of social media. According to statistics, 93% of online users are young adults aged 18-29 who compete equally with teens aged 12-17 as compared to 39% adults aged 30 and above (Staksrud 2016). Through the internet, these people connect with friends on different platforms who help each other in different ways. Some of the internet users are students who connected with their fellows for assignments and discussions while others are business people. However, the link between young people is always not healthy as some end up engaging in immoral behaviors hence contributing to harm in the society.

Any assignment usually undertaken has the outcome expectations. This research is intended to give a precise understanding of whether social media has made people more or less connected. As previous researches have been done on the same, it has never been concluded to what extent social media affects people connectivity due to the numerous advantages and disadvantages associated with it hence the purpose of this research. This research is designed to assess the hypothesis that social media has made people more or less connected.

References

Hunter, M. (2019). Connecting Generations, Connecting Disciplines: Intergenerational (Im)Possibilities in Popular Media. Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures, 11(1), 165-171. doi: 10.1353/jeu.2019.0009

Kampf, C. (2018). Connecting Corporate and Consumer Social Responsibility Through Social Media Activism. Social Media + Society, 4(1), 205630511774635. doi: 10.1177/2056305117746357

Staksrud, E. (2016). Youth 2.0: Social Media and Adolescence—Connecting, Sharing and Empowering. Journal Of Children And Media, 10(4), 515-518. doi: 10.1080/17482798.2016.1234730