Social Media Case Study

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What are the factors driving young users’ engagement with a social networking site and what are the factors that impact users’ frequency and attitude toward social networking sites?
Entering college usually means a different stage of life for most students when they have to adapt into this strange, new environment far away from their parents and friends. According to the study by Sponcil and Gitimu (2013) about how social media impacts students’ communication with friends and families: after conducting a questionnaire among 96 undergraduate students (67 females and 29 males) aged between 18-33, they found connecting with family and friends was the most popular reason that students use social media for (91.7%), followed by entertainment (59.4%) and relieving boredom (57.3%) (Sponcil and Gitimu, 2013). Also, 50% of the students indicated that they would communicate with family and friends on social networking sites every day (Sponcil and Gitimu, 2013). Maintaining the relationship with people you knew when adapting to a new environment seems to be a huge factor for why students use social networking sites like Facebook. In addition, they also found that users’ popularity affected their self-concepts. Most of current college students have an average number of 300-600 …show more content…

This created market based on the two major functions mentioned above, entertainment and boredom relief, for social networking site. Even planning a good use of the spare time created stress for students. This fact leads to their tendency to spending time on social sites, escaping from the stressful reality. Another study conducted by Cha (2010) revealed that escaping as the motive ranked the second among all five motives tested. In the study, the strongest motive is interpersonal utility, over other factors such as entertainment, boredom relief, escaping, and convenience (Cha,

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