Influence of Digital Technology and Social Media Upon Youth (Research Paper Sample)

INFLUENCE OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIAL MEDIA UPON YOUTH
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Influence of Digital Technology and Social Media upon Youth
Introduction
Social life today is changing at an exponential rate in terms of the progressive use of technology and social media. Numerous aspects of social life are being perceived differently through the spread of computers, cell phones, smart phones, the internet, iPods, among other forms of information technology. Currently a large part of business transactions is being conducted through ecommerce and most jobs have been redefined by the use of computers and internet access (Sheila, 2015). In fact most people are now participating in politics through social media and the internet, communicating with their leadership through email, and mobilizing meetings and protests on social media (Storsul, 2014). Education beginning at the lowest level is becoming increasingly dependent on the use of computers and information access through the internet. Even when it comes to personal relations with family and friends, the up-close intimate relationship is being influenced by technology and social media since a lot of conventional interaction is increasingly being reserved for technology through social media.
For this reason it is important to study how technology and social media are being experienced as well as their effects on the youth who are the predominant users. In this paper, I intend to explore how forms of these technologies and social media interactions are affecting the young population’s academic performance. I shall discuss how their schools performance is being shaped by this growing technology. However, this focus will not be directed on the youth as a general group, but it will also consider variables such as gender, class, and race in order to bring about a holistic picture of the youth. I focus on high school level students since they are the most engrained in the use of technology and social media.
Through my research, I endeavor to acquire a perception of how the youth apply these technologies and whether social media, specifically Facebook and Twitter, has a positive or negative effect on the youth in terms of academic performance.
Having an understanding on this phenomenon is imperative in this day and age since the digital era continues to expand every day. Some may argue that the youth’s ability to cultivate and develop healthy academic habits is constantly inhibited by the distractions of these social media networks (Livingstone, 2015), while others may be of the opinion that these skills and relationships have just become evolved in the sense that; for one to acquire academic information one does not have to go to library, rather these social media cites avail academic forums where one can access information. Also, if these two phenomena are occurring simultaneously, how does this affect the youth in terms academics.
Participants
For this purpose, I conducted 100 inter-personal interviews and a further 100 technologically administered interviews via social media private messages. My interviewees were all high school-level participants aged between the ages of 16 and 18. I used purposive sampling technique to choose the samples whereby I strived to balance out their races, gender, and class for the exercise. This allowed me a sense of distinction when it came to the disparity between inter-personal interactions versus technologically oriented interactions. I interviewed the interpersonal lot from within their school confines, while for the social media lot data was collected via questionnaires send as personal messages in Facebook and Twitter. The interpersonal approach seemed promising in the sense of their potential to gather accurate information while the social media approach was more likely to be slow and would most likely not avail as much information as the interpersonal approach. The research became more characterized and discipline-focused by distinctive practices and theories (Clark et al., 2014, p. 18).
The demographics of the participants were as follows; for the ten people I interviewed on an interpersonal level, there was diversity in terms of gender, race and class. In both interviews I selected fifty men and fifty women all of whom were 16 years of age and were at the senior of their high school. The lot was predominantly black, forty Indians, and ten white people, and ten people in the interview who presented themselves as ethnically-mixed, being African-Indian. In the aspect of class; fifty fell under the upper class, thirty fell under the middle class, while twenty fell under the working class. All interviewees attend a public high school. This sample gave me the capacity to analyze these youth sample as general reflection of the whole, as well as the capacity to consider the disparity brought about by class, gender and race. This is because the research presented new opportunities for the study of childhood with ready-made, convenient samples of participants (Clark et al., 2014, p. 18).
On the other hand, I further conducted an interview via social media private messages. These participants would randomly be interviewed through Facebook and Twitter; fifty from each social media network. In this group, forty respondents declined to present personal information of themselves inclusive of their race and class. The other sixty, however, agreed to share aspects of themselves relevant to this study. I sampled fifty men and fifty women. Sixty of the interviewees were 16 years of age while forty were 17 years of age. This sample, however, was not as diverse in terms of race with seventy identifying as black, ten white, and twenty who declined to reveal their racial inclination. The participants’ selection was not appropriate since there was a lot of bias in the selection of research subjects in terms of race. In addition, only fifty interviewees chose to share their class. Forty interviewees fell under the middle class, while ten members fell under the upper class. The interviewees were all high school students from various institutions in the country. The sample used one of the ethnography methods for studying human behavior by touching on how social media affected the youths. It was aimed at observing, recording and gaining insights of the natural changes necessitated by social media on the youth over extended period of time (Clark et al., 2014, p. 21)
Data Collection Tools and Methodology
Through my research, I endeavor to acquire a perception of how the youth apply these technologies and whether social media, specifically Facebook and Twitter, has a positive or negative effect on the youth in terms of academic performance. The research was mechanized in the processes to collect data which eliminated the effects of popular characteristics aimed at discovering the causal factors, agents and processes for the recorded changes (Clark et al., 2014, p. 37).
As a result of the contradictory opinions and findings concerning the effects of widespread technology and social media the goal of this research is to further research on both the positive and negative aspects on the youth, with regard to their relations, connectivity, and academic performance. More specifically this research aims at researching on how the social media networks affect youth academic performance. Are these social media networks a positive or negative influence?
As mentioned above, data collection was conducted through interviews and questionnaires. I divided the respondents into two groups; the first group I interviewed on an interpersonal level. These participants were of diverse genders, races and class. In the interviews I selected fifty men and fifty women all of whom were 16 years of age and were at the senior of their high school. The second group I interviewed via social media private messages via questionnaires. As stated initially, the participants would randomly be interviewed through Facebook and Twitter; fifty from each social media network through random sampling method. In this lot forty of respondents were unresponsive during the collection of personal information on themselves inclusive of their race and class. Sixty, however, agreed to share aspects of themselves relevant to this study. I sampled fifty men and fifty women. The sixty of the interviewees were 16 years of age while four were 17 years of age which was not ethical since it was biased. It did not balance both age groups.
The interviews conducted were deemed to “youth-friendly” in unwittingly or wittingly determining ways that consider young people to be in full control of their lives, a move to accommodate their valid opinions (Clark et al., 2014, p. 48). This technique is commonly considered inherently contingent with references of cultural nature and frames which influence the participants and the researchers. For this exercise I applied the convenience sampling, whereby I selected persons that were readily available for the interview. However, despite my small sample size, my efforts to diversify them makes this an exploratory exercise that samples the majority of groups that make up the youth population, hence making it quite a credible and reliable research approach.
The interpersonal interviews lasted for about 60 minutes each, with a positive response of a hundred percent. On the other hand, the social media interviewees availed a lesser response rate and the exercise proved to be much more challenging. For this reason, and due to the large number of the participants, I estimated the time-frame for the completion of the whole research project to be a period of 8 months; three months for interpersonal interviews and five months for social media administered interview...