THE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA USE IN THE COLLEGE OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION STUDENTS OF

FOUNDATION UNIVERSITY

Theoretical Background of the Study

The study is anchored on the theory of Daniel Levine. This theory emphasized that

Social media is impacting students positively and negatively. Positive practices of social

media increase student’s social intelligence and understanding of human

behaviours. Negative practices of social media make them materialistic, angry and

addicted to too many bad things.

But it’s not the problem, created by social networking websites, but problems arise when

we use it without analyzing what we are doing and what will be its impact on us, our

family, society, and country. That’s why social media not only a great tool for personal

development but it is also a tool for personal and social destruction.

The important impact that social media has had on people is that it has reshaped the way

we define what a friend is. On Facebook, everyone you are connected with is called “friend”,

but in the real world, that person would probably never be your friend. According to an

Edelman survey, the number of people who trust people they called friends is down to just

25% in 2010. This plays into the fact that by 2015, one out of ten of our “friends” on

facebook actually a company “bot” pages, we would never consider them friends.

However, when we specifically look at people we did know before social media, it has made

relationships only stronger. According to Harold Rheingold, a professor at Stanford and UC

Berkley, “we are seeing very strongly that people using social media to extend their

classroom or their neighborhood or their face-to-face relations beyond what they might
THE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA USE IN THE COLLEGE OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION STUDENTS OF
FOUNDATION UNIVERSITY

normally be.” Rheingold adds, ”It’s a means of staying in touch with people that you do

know in the face-to-face world.”

Social media has affected than just the way people interact one-on-one, but always the way

people interact one-to-many. Social networks have allowed for mass, worldwide

communities to develop and the most visible of these large communities is Wikipedia, an

entire community of people working together.

It is also interesting to note that, according to a survey done by Joe Thomas at Sanoma State

University in California, students are more likely to use social media to re-connect with old

friends than to meet new ones. A total of 88 percent of the 50 students surveyed said that

they reconnected with old friend, while eight percent used sites to make new friends. What

it all this means is that we are at a point where we have developed two sets of friends.

There are your online exclusive friends, people you connected with first from social

networks. Chances are that you will probably never meet them online, but you still contact

them through the online world. Then you have people that you physically met in the real

world. The fact that a survey says that most college students are social media to connect

with their real friends tells us that people still hold those connection dear. There is also a

comfort level with these people. You have met them, therefore they are real.
THE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA USE IN THE COLLEGE OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION STUDENTS OF
FOUNDATION UNIVERSITY

Theoretical Framework of the Study

This image shows how brands and companies can inject themselves into social media

communities. They now can work their way into conservations, molding them to desires

come out as something that ‘friend’ says. It goes back to the Gartner Group that companies

will fall under the ‘friend’ label, like actual friends.

Figure 1. Diagram of the Theoretical Framework of the study based

On the impact of social media theory by Daniel Levine.

THE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA USE IN THE COLLEGE OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION STUDENTS OF
FOUNDATION UNIVERSITY

Social media has had a great effect on how people communicate with each other. It has
made it incredibly easier to connect with people that you might not know or people
that you have not been able to talk to in years. Networks like facebook and Twitter
make it easy to also create communities that you can feel a part of. Clay Shirky,
in Cognitive Surplus even writes that digital networks and the internet have made
media so fluid that it not only has expanded classic public and private forms of media,
You used to only be able to 'fan' companies, like the above fan page for Coca-Cola. Now, companies have profile
pages that you can 'friend' like your physical friends.

However, when we specifically look at people we did know before social media, it has
made relationships only stronger. According to Harold Rheingold, a professor at
Stanford and UC Berkley, “We are seeing very strongly that people are using social
media to extend their classroom or their neighborhood or their face-to-face relations
beyond what they might normally be.” Rheingold adds, “It’s a means of staying in
touch with people that you do know in the face-to-face world.”
It is also interesting to note that, according to a survey done by Joe Thomas at Sanoma
State University in California, students are more likely to use social media to re-
connect with old friends than to meet new ones. A total of 88 percent of the 50
students surveyed said that they re-connected with old friends, while just eight
percent used sites to make new friends.
What all this means is that we are at a point where we have developed two sets of
friends. There are your online exclusive friends, people (and even companies) you
connected with first from social networks. Chances are that you will probably never
meet them online, but you still contact them through the online world. Then you have
people that you physically met in the real world. The fact that a survey says that most
college students use social media to connect with their real friends tells us that people
still hold those connection dear. There is also a comfort level with these people. You
have met them, therefore they are real.
However, Reem Abeidoh, a social media strategist, gets even more in-depth, writing
that there can be different levels of relationships you can have with people you meet
on social networks, from Jedi to Link-lover. (A Jedi is a person who you genuinely
become friends with strictly through online communication, while a Link-lover is
someone whose sole interactions with you are through random links.) “Through trial
THE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA USE IN THE COLLEGE OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION STUDENTS OF
FOUNDATION UNIVERSITY

and error,” Abeidoh says, “you begin to realize who is loyal and trust-worthy and who
is there just to pimp a link.”

This image shows how brands and companies can inject themselves into social media communities. They now
can work their way into conversations, molding them so their desires come out as something that a ‘friend’ says.
It goes back to the Gartner Group report that companies will fall under the ‘friend’ label, like actual friends.

Social media has affected more than just the way people interact one-on-one, but also
the way people interact one-to-many. Social networks have allowed for mass,
worldwide communities to develop and the most visible of these large communities
is Wikipedia, an entire community of people working together. The only thing these
people have in common is that they are knowledgeable about certain subjects and they
all seek to better the Wikipedia pages on their subjects. This turns Wikipedia into a
direct definition of what collective action is. Without social media, a group this size
working for the same cause would never be gathered. As Shirky says, “The Internet is
the first big communication network to make group communication a native part of its
repertoire… [it offers] the flexibility that allows people to design and try new
communication tools…” (Pages 157-8)
Image on left from: http://www.thejordanrules.com/DiagramIndex.html.
In conclusion, social networking on the web not only changed friendships and
communities, but also changed the way we define them. ‘Friend’ now means anyone
 THE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA USE IN THE COLLEGE OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION STUDENTS OF
FOUNDATION UNIVERSITY

we connect with on facebook, from your best high school friend to the person from
Zurich who also likes The Beach Boys. ‘Community’ can now be a world-wide collective
of people who may never see each other, not just those in your close-nit
neighborhood.
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