Social Network Sites on Internet Addiction

In this new era, there is no doubt that young people are often more eager about embracing new technologies than adults and become highly skilled very quickly. From a national survey, in 2009 finds that 73% of online teenagers using social networking sites (SNS), which is increasing from 55% 3 years earlier (Lenhart, Purcell, Smith & Zickuhr, 2010). From this we can see that the growth of using social network sites is quick because in this high technology society, everyone will have at least one smartphone with wifi or data on their hands. They can surf the social network sites anytime anywhere. In Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, we can see a lot of teenagers have an account on one of the social media. And for me, I have one Facebook account and one Instagram account. It is not weird if you have more than one social account.

What are Social Network Sites (SNS)?

It is when a teenager joins a site like Facebook they first create a personal profile. These profiles display information such as one’s name, relationship status, occupation, photos, videos, religion, ethnicity and personal interests. What differentiates SNS from previous media like a personal homepage is the display of one’s friends (Boyd & Ellison, 2007). They also defined SNS as web-based services that allow individuals to construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection and view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. Besides can exhibit the network of a friend, other users also can click on their profiles and traverse ever widening social network. For example, when I register for Facebook, I will fill in all the information that needed then I can add the people I know from my friend who I added earlier. Such as I added “Amy Tan” as my Facebook’s friend and I want to add her friend “Joe Wong” as my Facebook’s friend too, so I can go to Amy Tan’s profile to search for “Joe Wong” and add him as my Facebook’s friend.

What is Internet Addiction?

The internet which was developed to increase communication and facilitate information exchange has grown beyond expectations making some users unable to control their internet use and thus experience problems in their functioning at work and in social and private spheres (Young, 1999). It brings the meaning that a person who spend excessive amount of time to online without controlling and finally they faced problems in their works, family and relationship. Too much time exposure to the online world, it can harm you in your health, relationship, works and safety. A real example, in 14 April 2014, a 23 years old jobless teenager was addicted to play online games and always stay up late for morning 4am. This situation maintained for everyday and finally he was found dead at his room in front of his computer. His parents said that they had advised him not to play games until late night even his parents had tried to lock his computer but he chose to ignore his parents’ advises. From the news above, we can see that the seriousness of internet addiction.

Paper cutting from China Press 2013

Does Social Network Sites (SNS) use affect student grades and learning? The answer is, YES. Why do I say so is because from a conference paper by Karpinski (2009) received much media attention with findings that college Facebook users have lower GPAs than students who are not users of the sites. For example, my brother’s friend named Keat, he likes to use SNS especially Facebook. He uses Facebook to play games, search for his school’s girl and gossiping. When he came to my house to study, his phone will not away from his hands. If my brother told him to concentrate on study because SPM are coming, he will put down for a while and after few seconds he started to play phone again. Few days ago, the result of SPM was out, my brother got 10 A’s for his results. But for Keat, he almost failed all the subjects he took. Now he regret why he didn’t work harder for his results and he can’t even get any offer from college or university.

If a person gets addicted to internet, he or she will start to decline investment in the relationship no matter with friends, family members or with their partner. They will likely have less energy to participate in their relationship. They do not get as excited about talking vacation together and avoid talking about long-range plans. In my family, my parents have set a rule which is when we sit down to have breakfast, lunch or dinner, everyone’s smartphones or tablets cannot be on the table or in our hands. We need to keep it in our room or away from dining table. So when our family are having dinner together, we can talk to each others, discuss about our coming vacation and our studies also. But when I went to dinner with my family at restaurant, I can see that there are a lot of people keep pressing their phone and they did not have any conversations with their family members. And it will make their relationship between family members become wider compare to my family and I. 

Some of the parents will give their kids to play online games in the smartphones or tablets while waiting the dishes up to the table. When we asked about it, they said that it can avoid their kids to being noisy and keep running here and there in the restaurant. These actions will make the internet addiction more serious because they need to rely to the devices to make sure their kids won’t be noisy and running here and there.

The major controversy surrounding SNS is youth safety and privacy or called as the problem of online affairs. Approximately 70% of school districts block access to SNS, and the main reason is for this trend centers on fears about students safety (Lemk, 2009). At an alarming rate, once long-term and stable marriages are destroyed by a cyberaffair. “Cyberaffair” is defined as a romantic and/ or sexual relationship that is initiated via online contact and maintained pre-dominantly through electronic conversations that occur through e-mail, chat rooms or interactive games (Young, 1999). 

Teenagers like to post up their status to SNS such as where they go, what they play, what they eat and what they buy and so on. These actions will harm their safety and privacy. For example, a real case happened at 11 September 2015 in Puchong. A 13 years old student was raped by a man she just befriended on social media. This teenager known the man about a week after that he started a conversation with her via Wechat. She continued to communicate with the man throughout the week and finally she agreed to meet up with him in person. She ran away from her house Pahang to Kuala Lumpur at 10 September 2015. When she reached KL to find the man, he being good with her at the start and brought her went around in KL city. After that he brought the girl back to his empty house and raped her. The girl’s father make a police report after his daughter missing for 5 days. At 15 September 2015, she went back to her house and told her father when her father asked her. The father felt angry and make another police report but the man was running away from his house.                                                                                

                                                       

Paper cutting from China Press 2015

Next, SNS will affect people’s Psychological Well-Being and Self Esteem virtually. These two symptoms are the most common outcomes of interest in prior Internet and SNS studies. Researchers typically measure self-esteem using established scales such as the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (Ellison, 2007). Psychological well-being often refers to various measures that capture an individual’s satisfaction with life. Scholars use a variety of scales that include measures of loneliness, depression and overall satisfaction (Kraut, 1998). 

From explanation above, we know that most of the people in using SNS like to post their “selfie” pictures to let the audiences to “like” or comment something nice words to fill up their satisfaction. For example, one of my cousins, we call her “Aleecia” and she now is 18 years old. She likes to take “selfie” and post on her Facebook and let people to like and comment on her photo. Sometimes when I saw the photo and didn’t click “like” for her photo, she will call me and ask me to click “like” on her photo. Then she will feel like very happy when she gets a lot of “likes” on her photo. From this we can see that Aleecia is feeling satisfied when her photo has many likes and her self-esteem is high. She may be will feel that they are a lot of people looking at her and the audiences on Facebook are care about her although she is came from single parent family.

In conclusion, in this high-technology society, technology is such an integral part of our life. Rely too much to Social Networking Sites (SNS) have negative impacts towards users if the users do not know how to use it wisely. If using in the wrong way, it may harmed you in mentally and physically or it maybe will harm your life from the examples above. We need to know how to manage time in using SNS and concerns about the effects will bring to them.

References

Ahn, J. (2011). The Effect of Social Network Sites on Adolescents’ Social and Academic Development: Current Theories and Controversies. 

Australian Psychological Society. (2010). The Social and Psychological Impact of Online Social Networking. 

Boyd, D. N., & Ellison, N. B. (2007). Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship. 

Cachia, R. (2008). Social Computing: Study on the Use and Impact of Online Social Networking IPTS Exploratory Research on the Socio-economic Impact of Social Computing. 

Natascha Zeitel-Bank. (2014). Social Media and its effects on individuals and Social Systems.

Sato, T. (2006). Internet addiction among students : prevalence and psychological problems in Japan.

Young, K. S. (2004). Internet Addiction.