A RESERCH PROPOSAL

ON
EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON YOUTH
BY
HONEY GUPTA
REG NO: 11910981, B.COM

MITTAL SCHOOL OF BUSINESS

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY
PHAGWARA, PUNJAB.

ABSTRACT: The study concentrates on the impact of social media on youth.

As we all know that Social media is a platform for public around the World to
discuss their issues and opinions. Before knowing the actual aspects of social
media people must have to know what actually social media is? Social media is
a term used to describe the interaction between groups or individuals in which
they produce, share, and sometimes exchange ideas, images, videos and many
more over the internet and in virtual communities. Children are growing up
surrounded by mobile devices and interactive social networking sites such as
Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, which has made the social media a vital
aspect of their life. Social network is transforming the behaviour in which
youthful people relate with their parents, peers, as well as how they make use of
technology. Social media also influence students positively to understand
human behaviours and negatively become selfish and fanatic. Thus social media
is used both for construction and destruction purpose for people from different
walks of life.
KEYWORDS: Social Media, Human Behaviour, Education, Social
Networking, Effect on Youth.

INTRODUCTION: A social media is an online platform which people use to

build social networks or social relations with other people who share similar
personal or career interests, activities, backgrounds or real-life connections. The
impact of social networks on young people is significant. It is becoming
increasingly clear that social networks have become part of people’s lives.
Many adolescent people are using their laptops, tablet computers and smart
phones to check Tweets and status updates from their friends and family. Due to
the advancement in technology, people are pressured to accept different
lifestyles. Social networking sites can assist young people to become more
socially capable. Social media is a web-based form of data communication.
Social media platforms allow users to have conversations, share information
and create web content. Social media has different forms, together with blogs,
micro-blogs, wikis, social networking sites, photo-sharing sites, instant
messaging, video-sharing apps such as tik-tok ,snake video which are very
famous now a days , podcasts, widgets, virtual worlds, and more. Billions of
people around the world use social media to share information and make
connections.
On an individual level, social media allow us to communicate with our friends
and relatives, gain knowledge of new things, develop your interests, and be
entertained. On a professional level, we can make use of social media to expand
or broaden our knowledge in a particular field and build our professional
network by connecting with other professionals in our industry. At the business
level, social media allows us to have a conversation with our audience, gain
customer feedback, and elevate your brand. Social Media is a innovative idea
with a very brilliant opportunity with additional scope for advancements. With
the advancement of social media many organizations are making use of this
medium to better their practices. With the use of social networking we can
advertise or communicate in a more efficient way. Likewise people don’t have
to rely on the media or TV to get their daily dose of news it can all be obtained
from a social networking site. People can track or get information from all over
the world.
OBJECTIVES:
 To understand the purpose of using social media
 To know the positives and negatives of social media
 To study the influence of social media on youngsters
 To suggest the youth to use social media in a right way

REVIEW OF LITRATURE:
1. Nia Crawford, Loebig in their research on “How Does Social Media
Effect Youth?” (2015) stated that social media is like a coin which have
valuable and harmful impacts too on the youths. It helps youngsters to
flourish and grab downward at the same time, hence youth has to be
careful. Youth connect with many people and promote themselves in their
career, so they need to be very careful with their decisions

2. Akashdeep Bhardwaj,Vinay Avasthi and Sam Goundar on their survey

“Impact of Social Networking on Indian Youth”(2017) stated that The
extensive use of Social Networking in India has been on the rise among
the new generation youths. In today’s world, life cannot be imagined
without Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp, LinkedIn or Twitter
accounts and online handles. The new age social networking culture has
been well accepted and has met an enthusiastic response and acceptance
from the youth.

3. Ghulam Shabir, Yousef Mahmood Yousef Hameed and the team in their
research” The Impact of Social Media on Youth: A Case Study of
Bahawalpur City” (2014) told that the majority of the respondents were
students while a smaller proportion were the people belonging to different
employee groups. This shows that the use of social media is widely used
by all the segmented youngsters of the society in Pakistan. The final
results of the survey shows that almost 50 percent users like face-book as
their primary and favourite social media form followed by Skype 39 per
 cent and the 11 per cent users use other forms of social media like Twitter
and Instagram .

4. Bhargava and Rani in her research “Influence of social media on Indian

teenagers” (2015), have opined that, the influence of social websites can
be good on students, if there is a closer look on the real impact of social
media. Authors have further opined that, several social media websites
are now a day’s continuously distracting adolescent students from their
educational career. Through, the study authors have observed that,
adolescent students are emphasizing on social media sites which is a
complete wastage of time. Through this study authors have focused on
the impacts of social media on Indian education, students and impacts on
adolescents’ life. Authors have further described that, how social media
networking websites are addictive and harmful for Indian youth and
adolescents. Authors have concluded that, addiction of social media could
extinct the future of Indian youth and it had a very bad effect on
education. Authors have recommended to the parents that, parents should
regularly check their children’s activities on social media network and do
not let them overuse of social network websites. Authors have also
recommended to government to ban all the porn sites, and later it was
successfully banned in india.

5. Gurusamy in his study “A study on the influence of social networking

sites” (2014), have examined the influence of social Networking Sites on
interpersonal relationships of college students. Authors have also
constructed a profile which focused on the students’ usage pattern of
social Networking sites. Through this study authors have explained the
concept of social networking sites and social network through
sociological perspective. Authors have found that, the usage of social
networking sites has effects on the interpersonal relationship of college
students, especially with their members of family, friends and teachers.
Authors have also observed that, due to the availability of social
networking sites, the communication between students and their family
members, between students and friends has increased. In this research
study, usage pattern, purpose of usage of social networking, time spend,
preferred social networking etc., have been focused keeping the scientific
research base. This study provides an outlook for investigating the
technological implications on society in the domain of sociology.
6. Valkenburg et al in their study “Social consequences of the Internet for
adolescents” (2009), have discussed on the state of the literature on the
consequences of online communication technologies for adolescents
social connectedness and wellbeing. Authors have observed that,
adolescents are spending more time for social media than adults. Through
this study authors have first explain the reasons of diverge of recent
studies from past studies. Authors have discussed on a viable hypothesis
to explain the recent findings and discussed on some contingent factors
that may deserve special attention for future study. In the opinion of
authors, the research studies pertaining to social media usage, internet
usage is still new for scholars, sociologist and does not yet permit to draw
decisive conclusions.

7. Wanajak in his research of Internet use and its impact on secondary

school students (2011), has differentiated between normal daily social
media/ Internet use behaviors and addictive behaviors. Author has also
highlights the impacts of those behaviors that may signify maladaptive
use. The main aims of the study are, to generate a consensus definitions
and diagnostic criteria of Internet Addiction from the literature. Through
this study author has also identified the prevalence of Internet addiction
among secondary school students between aged from 11 to 19 years old,
and identified the important factors that may influence Internet use
among secondary school students. Author has also highlighted the
potential intervention strategies which help to minimize harm of Internet
addiction. Through the study author has found that, the amount of time
spent on the Internet is related to gender, having Internet access at home,
using the Internet alone. It is also observed that, Internet addiction is
directly correlated with the amount of time spent on the using of social
media and Internet per week, with addictive spending on average 29
hours per week for social media.

8. Avril Keating,In his article “Social media and youth political

engagement: Preaching to the converted or providing a new voice for
youth?” (July 7, 2017) stated that In order to explain why some young
adults are using social media for political engagement while others are
not, then they examined whether these differences could be explained by
socio-demographic resources or young adults’ political interest. From this
article I am able to relate with the ongoing farmers protest due to which
 the internet is banned in some area as the youth and other can spread fake
and hatred tweets and message in the social media.

9. Tapscott (1998) described that, children grew in digital environment and

digital literacy gave liberty to children in relation with adolescent in the
world. Children had confidence on internet. Digital media had provided
opportunities to contribute with those countries that have ICT
(Information Communication Technology).

10.Livingstone and Bober on their study “UK children go online” (2003),

stated that social media was the main cause of generation gap in several
ways like lack of awareness, recognition of domestic rules, and in what
kids were really acting and what were parents’ opinion about their
children’s doing. People forgot their rituals and traditions because of
social media.

11.Berson and Berson (2005) on their study “Challenging Online Behaviors

of Youth” stated that high use of internet linked high risks, and there had
no risk of simple use of internet. In early childhood, they did not know
about risks, and they need guider. In teenage, they had not developed
abilities to make life’s choices. And they stated that these risk can be at a
severe level that may cause mental illness like depression.

12.Brady, Holcomb, and Smith on their case study “The Use of Alternative
Social Networking Sites in Higher Educational Settings” (2010) stated
that social media had provided efficient ways for education. Students
used social media for e-learning for example they can pursue many online
courses which are available in internet such as udemy and coursera and
they can learn things free of cost from the very popular app you-tube.

13. Lusk on his article “Digital natives and social media behaviour” (2010)
said that, social media could be used for academic purpose by students.
Students could learn and enhance their communication skills by the use
of social media. Social media had provided new web tools which could
 be used by the students to raise their learning skills. He added that Social
media is an aspect of the internet which allows individuals and groups to
create and publish online content, share the content, and interact about it.

14. Jacobsen and Forste on their article “The Wired Generation: Academic
and Social Outcomes of Electronic Media Use Among University
Students” (2011), said that social media had negative effect on grades,
about two-thirds of the students were used media while doing homework,
or in class which had bad impact on their grades because once a student
start using such sites , the average use time of those sites increase day by
day as they slowly get addicted to that and while studying their attention
level also decreases due to which they will not be able to focus on their
study properly.

15.Kalpidou, Costin, and Morris, on their study “The Relationship Between

Facebook and the Well-Being of Undergraduate College Students”
(2011), stated that there was a relationship between social media and
grades, Ohio State University described in their study that those students
had low grades who spent their time on social media, then those who did
not spend their time on social media and later the research found that the
number of Facebook friends potentially hinders academic adjustment, and
spending a lot of time on Facebook is related to low self-esteem. The
number of Facebook friends was negatively associated with emotional
and academic adjustment among first-year students but positively related
to social adjustment and attachment to institution among upper-class
students. The results suggest that the relationship becomes positive later
in college life when students use Facebook effectively to connect socially
with their peers.

16.Parvathy & Suchitra on their study “Effect of social media on young

generations” (2015) stated that the social networking site on (SSN) is a
platform for providing the youth a golden opportunity in exchanging
knowledge, finding employment and social quotient among them. The
youth specifically interested and sharing the personal experience, video
and picture. There are two main impacts one is positive impact, and other
one is negative impact. The Positive impact deal with the SNS helped for
 youth population in a various aspect. Now a day the young population
lived in various location to share material on an experience person and
using the research purpose. The Negative impacts deals with SNS to
using longer time. The average per persons to spend time on 9 to 10
hours, it will affect their health badly both physically and mentally.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

SCOPE OF THE STUDY: The study seeks to find out the impacts of social
media among the youth. While the study recognizes that new interactive
technologies have impacts on other age groups outside the youth bracket, and as
such this study will limit itself only to the youths. The study will focus itself
only on youths who are of age group between17-20.
RESEARCH DESIGN: The study is based on the quantitative method of
research. And the technique that was used under this method is the normative
survey approach.

SOURCES OF DATA: As this is assignment based research study the

maximum data collected is from the secondary data such as research paper,
articles, journals, websites and reports and remaining data was discussed
directly from youths which come under primary data.

RESEARCH APPROACH: This research employs the method of qualitative

research through quantitative analysis to gather in depth understanding of social
media using patterns amongst the teenagers and its implications on their
behaviour. Samples were randomly selected from different online sites.

LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY: As this is assignment based research the

study is limited by time and financial resources and as result the research will
have to source for more financial resources and use alternative means. Since
few similar studies have been done especially in institutions of higher learning,
there is limited empirical literature on the area of impacts of social media on
youth. Another expected limitation is that the youth might fail to give correct
information on the basis of invasion of their privacy. The researcher will
explain to them that the study is purely for academic purposes and not
motivated by any other interests whatsoever.

REFERENCES:

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Preaching to the converted or providing a new voice for youth?. The British
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