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VOLUME NO. 6 (2015), ISSUE NO. 03 (MARCH) ISSN 0976-2183

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN COMMERCE & MANAGEMENT A Monthly Double-Blind Peer Reviewed (Refereed/Juried) Open Access International e-Journal - Included in the International Serial Directories

http://ijrcm.org.in/

93

IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON TEENAGERS: A CASE STUDY

MOHAMMAD OSAMA RESEARCH SCHOLAR

DEEN DAYAL UPADHYAY GORAKHPUR UNIVERSITY GORAKHPUR

ABSTRACT

It is very true that social media like facebook, twitter, orkut etc has been entered in our life like a blood i.e as we cannot live without blood likewise we cannot live without these social media tools. Now with the help of these tools it is very easy to share any documents, Photos, Videos as it was very difficult and costly earlier. Today the social media has been playing huge role in determining the personalities of all the ages group like children, teenagers, young adult and old People. Sometime it is very useful as well as necessary for all the ages but inspite of this our teenagers and young generation has been doing some un-expectable and unavoidable things which has been distorting the personalities as well as the behavior of our teenagers which resulted in rude behavior, sleeping disorder,Absent mindedness etc. Teenagers have been sharing, Liking and promoting sexual contents, Filthy and violence images under the nostrils of their parents.They have not being watched by their parents/Gaurdians which resulted in bad deeds. The Study will mainly focus on the impact and changing behavior of the teenagers due to excessive use of social media. This study will basically concentrated on the basis of Primary data collected by the scholar and the methods of collecting data will be Convenient sampling techniques will be used. Instead of this some helps will be taken from secondary source of data. The area of the study will be confined to Eastern Utter Pradesh’s big cities like Lucknow, Gorakhpur & Varanasi.

KEYWORDS Social Media, Teenagers, Behavior.

INTRODUCTION oday the social media is a very important medium to share our feelings, thoughts and ideas in best possible manner in a whole world. Social media is a blood of life for ourself. No one can imagine to live without these medias. In other words we can say that Social media refers to the means of interactions among people in which they create, share, and exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and networks. social media depends on mobile

and web-based technologies to create highly interactive platforms through which individuals and communities share, co-create, discuss, and modify user- generated content. It introduces substantial and pervasive changes to communication between organizations, communities, and individuals. As parents strive day in and day out to provide healthy meals, drive our kids to soccer practice, cheer at the games; attend parent-teacher meetings at school and teach them to say “no” to drugs and other bad habits. While we are busy covering all the basics of being a good parent, we can be far too oblivious of the effects the social media is having on children. Kids today are as technologically connected as anyone on the planet has ever been. They have access to social media like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and they can be able to chat in real time with their friend who are a thousand miles away. Various reports suggest that about eighty-three percent of American youth use their phones for email, mobile internet and texting. The report further states that these American teens send and receive text messages 144 times a day. If the teens are not texting, they are usually on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter where they chat, share photos and video and participate in gaming. In An survey held in USA -- More than half (55%) of all of online American youths ages 12-17 use online social networking sites, according to a new national survey of teenagers conducted by the few Internet & American Life Project. The survey also finds that older teens, particularly girls, are more likely to use these sites. For girls, social networking sites are primarily places to reinforce pre- existing friendships; for boys, the networks also provide opportunities for flirting and making new friends. The negative effects of being this “plugged in” is beginning to take enormous effect on kids. Because social interaction comes overwhelmingly online rather than face to face, American youth are showing severe lack of social skills. They are often more comfortable with technology than they are with talking to people. They have not learned the proper communication and conversation skills, how to deal with interpersonal situations and how to date and get to know other people behind the screen.

LITERATURE REVIEW Social capital broadly refers to the resources accumulated through the relationships among people Coleman, 1988). Social capital is an elastic term with a variety of definitions in multiple fields (Adler & Kwon, 2002), conceived of as both a cause and an effect (Resnick, 2001; Williams, 2006). Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992) define social capital as “the sum of the resources, actual or virtual, that accrue to an individual or a group by virtue of possessing a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition” (p. 14). The resources from these relationships can differ in form and function based on the relationships themselves. Researchers have conducted several studies on Internet addiction (e.g., Morahan-Martin & Schumacher,2000; Young, 1998; Young & Rodgers, 1998). Many researchers suggest that people are not addicted tothe Internet as a whole, but rather to the interactivity of the Internet. It appears that specific applicationsare more addictive than others, namely those that are more interactive (Davis, 2001). The ability tocommunicate with other people in real time, present oneself in the manner one desires, and develop adegree of intimacy may be addictive to some people, whereas simply gathering information and sendinge-mail may not be addictive (Morahan-Martin & Schumacher, 2000; Scherer & Bost, 1997; Yang & Tung,2007). Usage of Facebook now accounts for 22% of consumers time on the Internet, and Facebook usage surpasses the usage of e-mail and the Google search engine (Bilton, 2010). As usage of Facebook hasgrown, so have concerns about addiction to and pathological usage of it. A search on the Google site for“Facebook” and “addiction” revealed more than 5,000 Web pages. Social capital has been linked to a variety of positive social outcomes, such as better public health, lower crime rates, and more efficient financial markets (Adler & Kwon, 2002). According to several measures of social capital, this important resource has been declining in the U.S. for the past several years (Putnam, 2000). When social capital declines, a community experiences increased social disorder, reduced participation in civic activities, and potentially more distrust among community members. Greater social capital increases commitment to a community and the ability to mobilize collective actions, among other benefits. Social capital may also be used for negative purposes, but in general social capital is seen as a positive effect of interaction among participants in a social network (Helliwell & Putnam, 2004). For individuals, social capital allows a person to draw on resources from other members of the networks to which he or she belongs. These resources can take the form of useful information, personal relationships, or the capacity to organize groups (Paxton, 1999). Access to individuals outside one’s close circle provides access to non-redundant information, resulting in benefits such as employment connections (Granovetter, 1973). Moreover, social capital researchers have found that various forms of social capital, including ties with friends and neighbors, are related to indices of psychological well-being, such as self esteem and satisfaction with life (Bargh & McKenna, 2004; Helliwell & Putnam, 2004). Putnam (2000) distinguishes between bridging and bonding social capital. The former is linked to what network researchers refer to as “weak ties,” which are loose connections between individuals who may provide useful information or new perspectives for one another but typically not emotional support (Granovetter, 1982). Alternatively, bonding social capital is found between individuals in tightly-knit, emotionally close relationships, such as family and close

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VOLUME NO. 6 (2015), ISSUE NO. 03 (MARCH) ISSN 0976-2183

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN COMMERCE & MANAGEMENT A Monthly Double-Blind Peer Reviewed (Refereed/Juried) Open Access International e-Journal - Included in the International Serial Directories

http://ijrcm.org.in/

94

friends. After briefly describing the extant literature on these two forms of social capital and the Internet, we introduce an additional dimension of social capital that speaks to the ability to maintain valuable connections as one progresses through life changes. This concept, “maintained social capital,” permits us to explore whether online network tools enable individuals to keep in touch with a social network after physically disconnecting from it. Studies of the first popular social networking site, Friendster, (boyd, 2004, boyd, 2006, boyd and Heer, 2006, Donath and boyd, 2004) describe how members create their profile with the intention of communicating news about themselves to others. Boyd, using an ethnographic approach, reveals the possibility of unintended consequences. As in other social networking sites, Friendster members create a profile and make public links to others. What if there is something about your friend’s page that might cause embarrassment if viewed out of context? Although members can control what appears on their profile, they cannot control what appears on a friend’s profile. Crude pictures on a friend’s profile caused concern for a teacher when her students asked to ‘friend’ her. This placed her in an awkward position, because allowing students access to her profile would also allow them to view her friends, who she knew to have risqué pictures on their profile (boyd, 2004). This incident demonstrates that concerns raised by navigating issues of privacy and trust were apparent in the first scholarly articles on social networking sites. Tapscott and Williams (2006) consider social networks as a part of a wider trend in communication landscapes. They characterize it as “mass collaboration”. In their opinion, transparency, peer collaboration, audience participation and globalization are changing markets and companies and social networks like YouTube or MySpace are crucial. A new type of market is being shaped: copyright, communication strategy and message control by hierarchical management structures is increasingly under attack. Wikipedia is described as symbol of this process that is influencing the communication of brands, fashion, markets, ideas and ideology. Other reasons may include feelings of affiliation and belonging, need for information, goal achievement, self-identity, values, and notions of accepted behavior (Ridings and Gefen 2004).

OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY The objective of the study for the researcher is to estimate the changing behavior of the youths due to excess usage of Social Networking Sites (SNS) in their day to day life. Researcher tries to find out the reasons behind the changing personality of our youths while interacting with his/her parents/Teachers.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY A well designed questionnaire has been distributed among the college students age ranging to 16-20 i.e. the college students of high school and intermediate as they seems to be more SNS prone in this age. There is a various objective type and yes/no type questions in the questionnaire ranging from their frequency of using facebook to behavioral changes using facebook. The questionnaire consists of 20 questions and distributed among the various colleges of Lucknow, Varanasi and Gorakhpur and the number of respondents are 350 out of which 160 are females and 190 are male students.

INTERPRETATION OF THE FINDINGS The result found that out of 360 respondents 288(80%) of the students were facebook prone and they accept that they visits their profile daily, further it is found that 198(55%) of the responded accepted that they use facebook only for time pass and fun only,79(22%) accept that they spend time on facebook to eliminate loneliness in their life as their parents are employed. About 252(70%) of the people accepted that they get scolded by their parents as they spend more than 1 hour on facebook. 54(15%) of the people assume that they got gibberish, freakish due to excess usage of facebook but when the researcher asked this questions to their respective teachers they accept that most of the students getting freakish, rowdy due to excess use of facebook and internet. 36(10%) of the respondents said that they have shown their political view on facebook rest of all are don’t know about it. For their internet access medium is concern 238(66%) of the respondents said that they access their SNS profiles through Multimedia/Android base mobiles, 72(20%) said that they access through personal computers/Laptops at home and 50(14%) says that they go to internet café to access the Facebook. When asked about liking of obscene pages during the visit of facebook, most of the respondents 252(70%) says that they have seen that contents but never like it due to some social reasons as it is shown in your profile with rest of your friends while 108(30%) said that they have not goes to that kind of pages regularly but in their life they have gone through. Females respondents reveals that they have make their profile on FB for making friends, adding new people and increase the social status while boys have said in the questionnaire that they create their profile for flirt, making friends of opposite sex and for time pass. About 136(85%) of the female students accept that SNS are not the safe place for their personal information sharing purpose. While Discussing to their parents who came to the school to pick and drop their kids researcher discussed on many issues regarding excess use of facebook etc. Mostly parents accept that due to the excess use of facebook etc the children is always in dilemma that whether to study seriously or open our profile. When researcher asked that why you parents have been providing internet access to their childrens they told that it not in our hand as it is a very necessary thing in our life now a days as all the homework, projects is to be done on computer with the help of internet.

REASONS FOR CREATING PROFILES ON SNS Most of the youth makes their profile on SNS for social belongingness. The main reasons behind making these profile is to increase the friendship circle and socially active. In an study done in USA found that most of the Boys Create their profiles on SNS for Flirt only as well as girls Creates profile on SNS for chatting, Tagging and entertainment. No doubt social networking becomes the most powerful and fast form of media for communication today. Social networking like Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, whatsapp, and many more uses among more than billion of people today. According to the survey report 2013 youth spend more than 2 hr on social networking sites. As in the digital age social networking is used for meeting new friends, old friends, connecting with family members globally, sharing ideas, photos. Businessman or woman can use social networking for advertising new product and promoting their services. It is very useful for musician to interact their fans. Apart from these benefits these social networking are becoming most advance form of job search portals. Job seeker can easily search job from a single platform. Now a days it becomes a part of social campaign for corruption, politic, national movements. People need to be loved and socially accepted; this phenomenon is referred to as "need to belong" (Baumeister and Leary 1995; Leary, Kelly, and Schreindorfer 2001). This need to belong among human beings is a "fundamental human motivation that is something all human beings possess to form and maintain at least a minimum quantity of lasting, positive, and significant interpersonal relationships" (Baumeister and Leary 1995, p. 497). Social networking sites offer a space in which people can address this need to belong by using services provided by the sites that enable conversations and information gathering, along with the possibility of gaining social approval, expressing opinions, and influencing others. Therefore, people's attitudes and behavior with regard to SNS may stem from their need to belong. The strength and intensity of this need varies among people and is considered "difficult or impossible for culture to eradicate" (Baumeister and Leary 1995, p. 499). Need to belong also can be understood on the basis of a fundamental interpersonal relations orientation, which suggests three basic needs underlie people's group-seeking behavior: inclusion, which pertains to the need to belong to or include others in a circle of acquaintances; affection, or the need to love or be loved by others; and control, which encompasses the need to exert power over others or give power over the self to others (Schutz 1966). Joining SNS can meet all three of these needs; specifically, people may join user-generated content sites such as Facebook to remain "in the loop" and maintain relationships with friends and others, irrespective of time and physical space. Because the level of the need to belong varies among people, its effect emerges in varying levels of attitudes and willingness by different people to join and participate in user-generated content sites. In other words, there is a greater chance that people will join and participate in SNS if they rate high on the need to belong scale.

VOLUME NO. 6 (2015), ISSUE NO. 03 (MARCH) ISSN 0976-2183

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN COMMERCE & MANAGEMENT A Monthly Double-Blind Peer Reviewed (Refereed/Juried) Open Access International e-Journal - Included in the International Serial Directories

http://ijrcm.org.in/

95

SIDE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES No doubt that social networking sites has been playing a very important role in our life but due to excessive use of these sites the youths minds have been changing in a negative way i.e.

They are reluctant to study continuously and after a bit of time they check every updates in their profiles.

Most of the teens are interested to make new friends whether they no each other personally or not.

It is very common that Teens always eager to make friends of opposite gender.

There are so many pages can be found which contains inappropriate content and the users are free to see all of them which leave the bad impression on youth minds.

In a most cases most of the person too much engage on social media that he don’t know what he has been eating/having and he takes a lot of food/fast food during surfing.

Due to excess use of SNS user become freakish and boring.

CONCLUSION As we have already discussed in the starting of the study that facebook usage have distorted the personality of the children and when we have gathered the data it is found obvious that it is devastating our childrens life too much. In more than 60% of the questionnaire the respondents accept that due to excess usage of facebook sometime we find our self too much desperate and loneliness in our life. During the gatherings with the parents and teacher they were much more disappointed due to this issue over children as they said that SNS should have to take necessary steps to check the too much activity of any students by modifying in their software. To sum up we can say that the time has come to take initial steps to check the SNS over activity of our school going children/college students to make their future better and make their life better.

LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY To make the study very clear and practical the researcher has taken all the necessary steps to achieve the target but there is a certain limitation of the study like the respondents are free to tick any option as they have no responsibility/seriousness about the study so maybe they have ticked mark in an inappropriate option which does not suites to his/her personality. Some of the Parents was not entertaining us as they said they don’t want to give any answer. Further it is not possible to select all the school/colleges for the research only famous school/colleges were selected for the study.

REFERENCES 1. Baumeister, R. F. and M.R. Leary (1995), "The Need to Belong: Desire for Interpersonal Attachments as a Fundamental Human Motivation," Psychological

Bulletin, 117, 497-529. 2. Lenhart, A. and M. Madden (2007), "Social Networking Websites and Teens: An Overview," pew Internet & American Life Project, available at

http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/198/report_display.asp (accessed August 22,2013). WEBSITES 3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media(Accessed on 26/08/2013) 4. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2004.tb00229.x/full(Accessed on 23/08/2013) 5. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00367.x/full(Accessed on 23/08/2013) 6. http://sociallyactive.com/social-media- effect/(Accessed on 23/08/2013) 7. http://www.unav.es/fcom/comunicacionysociedad/en/articulo.php?art_id=378(Accessed on 23/08/2013)

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