Alyssa Brown Carib Studies 2019 Draft One - For Merge.docx

ALYSSA BROWN CARIBBEAN STUDIES SBA 2019

DRAFT ONE (1)

Research topic Identity and Social Formation

Research Question How has social media affected the student’s academic performance at the Black River High School?

Introduction In this research it has been assumed that the student to student relationships can be affected through a school or learning environment. This research has come too prove if this effect has been good or bad. Whether students draw more to their peers or stray further away from them. To the readers of this research I do hope it will expand your knowledge in this aspect.

Table of contents

Literature Review According to the technicianonline website; today’s website is a global village. Everyone is connected to one another in this vast network generated by the internet. As said by Marshall McLuchan, a philosopher of communication theory. “The new electronic independence recreates the world in the image of a global village”. This electronic interference is inherently dependent upon the Internet. It illuminates the knowledge internationally, thereby making us global citizens. In the past, the communication and free sharing of thoughts and emotions among people were restricted by long distance, rationality and/or religion. But now, even these barriers cannot stop the flow of information and knowledge. The new world of social networking allows free sharing of thoughts. People share thoughts and feels among each through various mean such as social networking sites. Humans are seen as social animals. They always like to remain in some form of group or another and will eventually to do what this group does. All traditions and cultures are the product of a group oriented facets of human nature. Abraham Maslow mentioned this is his “Theory of motivation” that the social need of human beings is the third most important requirement after our physical and safety needs; the third tier in his hierarchy of needs. Even self-esteem comes after this social dependence. This is the main reason billions of people use social networking to stay connected, make new friends and satisfy their social needs. Statistics show that as of 2015, the largest social networking company, Facebook, has 1.49 billion active users, and the number of users is increasing every year. One of the most interesting things to look at is the increasing number of student use on social networking sites. As per the survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, 72 percent of high school and 78

percent of college students spend their time on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. These numbers indicates how much the student community is involved in this virtual world of social networking. Actually, many reasons exist that explain why students love to spend time socializing. Firstly, social networking provides them the freedom to do whatever they want; to upload what they want and talk to whom they please. They like to make new friends or to talk to the ones they see every day with more confidence, comment on the social lives of friends and families. Students can create other online identities that the real world does not allow. The freedom it gives to act just by sitting front of a computer enthralls them, and they them demand for more freedom .Never before has it so easy for young minds to create a digital image of their actions through such a spontaneous medium. But this has a rather dark side that has gained the attention of parents and teachers alike, even eminent psychologist, all over the world. One of the biggest problems is the identity crisis constant social networking produces.

As with everything else we humans use, social media is not wholly good, or bad. It’s merely a platform that lets us project our thoughts and values to a much larger audience than ever before. Since people by their very natures are flawed and capable of inflicting great harm to one another, social media has produced trolls (people who post inflammatory remarks and comments), and even worse, cyberbullies. When using social media, there is always a thin layer of glass separating us from one another. This allows us to occasionally dehumanize the person on the other side, and that’s when abuse can occur. Typing in a hurtful comment is much, much easier than saying one face to face. This glass wall has also given rise to the popular notion that

internet relationships are meaningless and hold none of the power that relationships do IRL (in real life). Whether that is true or not is a question of great debate in both the Internet and noninternet worlds. However, constant talk of cyberbullying and of teenagers ‘wasting’ their time on the Internet has made us ignore the fact that the glass wall is often a very good thing. Communication no longer has any limits in terms of geography or the number of people who can communicate through it at once. It allows global communities to form, brought together by a shared love of almost anything; from hockey, to books, to Doctor Who fanfiction. These communities can be massive, sprawling things with the capacity to induct real social change. Social media can influence our lives in many ways. It can influence what we buy, what we eat and even what we desire to look like. As time goes on, more people than ever are finding themselves getting hooked up in it. Social media affects the relationships between people in both positive and negative ways. Due to social media, it’s hard to have privacy. Someone can find out a lot of information about you with just the click of a button. I find that you are also pressured to stay in tune with the things that are taking place on social media and you more less have to be on it 24/7 to stay up to date with all of it. I can speak for myself when I say that social media is a huge distraction for teens who are trying to get school work done. Yes, there is a negative side to it, but it’s important to keep in mind that social media has its positive side. It makes meeting and connecting with people a lot simpler and it makes planning events a way easier task than it would be without the help of social media. People also use social media to keep up with their friends and family who are far away. It can even help with businesses that need people’s opinions because they can get feedback on what people think of their product or service they

want to sell. We all know that social media affects the relationships we have with each other and whether the effects are positive or negative, it's important to have in our society. In school, the use of online platforms such as school website will give students the right access to quality information about the school environment, departments, faculties, rules, and regulations. It has been observed that social media has a wider and faster means of circulating information not only to the students of an institution but also to the generality of the public. Students must use all available online platforms effectively and they must be conscious of social media positive and negative effects. They should try as much as possible to create a balance so as not to get carried away while learning. Students can get to know each other better through social media networks. It helps to bring together two or more people, where they can share their problem, which it can get solve by their fellow colleagues. If a student’s finds out that he or she is having a problem in a particular course, he or she can open up through chat and finds a genius who can provide a solution to the problem.

Questionnaire 1. What gender are you? Female

Male

2. Are you on any social media sites? Yes

No

3. How many social media sites are you currently registered on? 1-2

3-4

other

4. Do you use social media to communicate with only your peer? Yes

No

5. How long do you usually spend on a social media site per day? 5 minutes to 30 minutes

1 hour to 3 hours

4 hours and over

6. Have you or anyone have been bullied because of social media status? Yes no 7. Do you like and/or comment under any of your peers photos or videos? Yes no 8.