Social Media Case Study

1249 Words3 Pages

1.0 Introduction
1.1 Background of the Issue
According to the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN) (n.d.), social networking is defined as connecting one with his or her friends, family and associates via the Internet. In other words, as long as a website offers social interaction, it is known as a social media site. Rouse (n.d.) also defines social networking as a way to increase one's social contacts by connecting through individuals. The history of social networking began in Switzerland where British engineer Tim Berners-Lee from the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) discovered the World Wide Web (WWW) in 1989. After that, in 1991, students from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois demonstrated the first and only graphical browser, known as Mosaic, and with that, web pages were created. Since that year on, more and more social media sites are now available and accessible from virtually anywhere with over 550 million active Facebook users in 2011 (University of North Carolina, n.d.).
There is no doubt that “Social networking is a huge part of the modern teenager's life” (Giles, 2013, para. 1). Stanberry (2011) implies that social networking has taken the culture of today’s youth by storm. This is mainly because social networking provides today’s youth both entertainment and communication, thus there is a rapid increase in popularity over the past few years (O’Keeffe & Clarke-Pearson, 2011). Not only do social networking websites open opportunities for teenagers to come across with people from all walks of life online, they can also have conversations with friends and family that they have in real life. Most youths use social networking to s...

... middle of paper ...

...ites actually provide chances for teenagers to be involved in community services especially fund raising charity and being a volunteer in local activities. Besides, they can expand their connections through shared interests to include others from diverse backgrounds. This is a golden opportunity for them to respect and practice tolerance with people of different races and cultures (O’Keeffe & Clarke-Pearson, 2011). Hence, instead of influencing the young to be less involved in real life interactions, social networking is proven to be able to develop the young to be more active in community service and to give them the chance to interact with all walks of life regardless of their race and religion.
In conclusion, social networking is an effective tool to encourage effective communication and socialisation among youth today instead of causing them to be anti-social.

Open Document