Social Media Addiction Amongst University Students Research Paper

Social Media Addiction Amongst University Students - Research Paper ExampleHence, the research question for this study is, Which gender and while group is more(prenominal) addicted to social media and why? Review of Literature Dryer (2010) reported that by March of 2010, there were 200 jillion blogs worldwide, 450 million Facebook accounts, 27 million tweets every 24 hours from Twitter and 1.2 billion views on You Tube every day. As of 2012, it was reported that almost 75% of teens and young adults are members of at least one social networking site (Thompson & Lougheed, 2012), and with Facebook users, 250 million log into the site daily (Facebook, 2011). Such astounding statistics show explosive social media has great(p) over a short period of time and is expected to relentlessly grow more in the future. Dryer (2010) notes Social media, i.e., blogs, wikis, social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, multimedia system sharing sites like YouTube and Flickr, and social tag ging sites like Digg and Yelp, represents a revolutionary shift in the way we communicate. Social media has democratized information and empowered ordinary citizens with the ability to organize, function information, and be heard like never before in our history. Social media is word of mouth on steroids and is beginning to morph from a fun and light-headed way to stay socially connected with friends into a dynamic and interactive way of doing business (p. 16). Berinstein (2011) contends that the obsession with social media is linked to batchs expansive need to find oneself good. She concludes that social media has offered us a new way to anesthetize a deep-rooted feeling of lack the more likes we get, the better we feel (Bernstein, 2011, para. 1). What is addictive is actually the... This essay stresses that going back to the research question, Which gender and age group is more addicted to social media and why?, this research echoes results of recent studies that women and y ounger university students in the age group of 17-21 years are more prone to social media addiction due to the more prolonged time they eliminate online. Young ladies derive much satisfaction and a boost in their self-esteem when friends like or comment on their posts, especially their photos. They also embellish more emotions on their responses to friends posts, and are more emotionally distraught when they get disconnected from social media. The roller coaster of emotions they get from such social media sites make it more addictive to them as they continuously search for highs beyond the lows in emotions. In terms of age, younger people have a stronger need to establish man connections with their peers, so they use social media as an avenue to establish and nurture these relationships.This paper makes a conclusion that addiction to social media is more common than people think, and surprisingly, more acceptable by society. Living in the age of information and technology is boun d to develop such addiction since being socially and intellectually stimulated is a natural preference of people. What needs to be developed to a greater degree is the awareness and self-control necessary in fit time and effort to enjoy social media as well as live more fulfilled lives in the real world with ones family and friends.