Impact of Facebook on Students Behavior

Running head: FACEBOOK TO VIETNAMES STUDENTS Banking Academy of VietNam ITP – International Training Program FACEBOOK TO VIETNAMESE STUDENTS Student: Julie – F05E Instructor: Miss Fiona FACEBOOK TO VIETNAMESE STUDENTS Abstract Facebook is considered as the most popular social network website nowadays Created in 2004 by Mark Zukerberg, a Havard student, up to now, Facebook has more than 900 million active users all over the world and the majority is students Because of its popularity, Facebook has a great influence on students’ lives This research is to examine its effect level on them Using data from a survey of one hundred Vietnamese university students, I discovered a very close relationship between Facebook and students’ personal lives For these findings, I analyse situations of using Facebook, where problems are, and make some recommendations on how to address them Keywords: Facebook, social network, Mark Zukerberg FACEBOOK TO VIETNAMESE STUDENTS Introduction Facebook has become rapidly widespread among almost universities over the world with estimated rate of eighty-five percent of undergraduates actively participating in its services (Michael Arrington, 2005) What attracts students is its ability to connect to friends, upload photographs, play a host of games In spite of these practical benefits, schools, parents, even students start to concern about risks associated with Facebook Having said that, students themselves have not been completely aware of the consequences caused by Facebook That is the reason why they still spend much time on Facebook My research will provide a comprehensive view of Facebook, including the brief history, popularity and effect, concurrently expand on recent literatures by studying Facebook’s effect on students deeply I build up two question to answer: “How popular is Facebook among Vietnames students?”, “How does Facebook affect their lives?” History of Facebook The predecessor of Facebook is a “Hot or not” version which is called Facemash On th February, 2004, Mark Zuckerberg, a student from psychology department at Harvard University, founded “Thefacebook” Surprisingly, only one day after being launched, more than one thousand Havard students signed up and the numbers of registers continued to increase each day Realizing thefacebook’s growing in popularity, Mr Zuckerburg cooperated with two other students, Duston Moskovitz and Chris Hughes market their product to other college students Gradually, it expanded to Ivy League schools, Boston universities and other colleges in US Within a few months, thefacebook became a national college network website It became Facebook after the domain was purchased for $200,000 in August 2005 Nevertheless, at that FACEBOOK TO VIETNAMESE STUDENTS time, Facebook only allowed universities, schools, organizations, etc in US, UK and English speaking countries to sign up It was not until end of the year 2006 that Facebook has expanded to everyone At the same time, Facebook was offered by Yahoo to buy out at a price of one million dollars, but Mr Zuckerburg refused One year later, another proposal from CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, was also refused, even though the figures were 15 million dollar However, the more develope Facebook does, the more scandals it has According to Thoai My (2011), one of the most remarkable events is the case which occurred in February, 2004, one week after Facebook being founded There were three Havard students who accused Mr Zuckerburg of stealing their ideas Seriously, if these three people had won this case, he would have lost proprietary rights to Facebook and could have been sentenced to a few years’ imprisonment The case last for years, eventually Mr Zuckerburg accepted to pay a compensation of 65 million dollars It is not by chance that Facebook attracts such a lot of users Facebook contains a number of noticeable and convenient features It only takes users a few minutes to set up an account by filling their information and confirm it Facebook friends can see all of each other’s Facebook, including walls, status, profiles, or photographs Besides, users are able to chat with their friends on one-to-one, or with groups, share new photos, videos, stories, complaints, etc Indeed, Facebook contributes to creating a potential environment where people from all over the world can communicate, make friends, exchange information It is also a link which brings everybody together despite different nationalities, races, colours, education and so on FACEBOOK TO VIETNAMESE STUDENTS Literature Review In 2004, Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook in order to help Harvard students store files and communicate with each other easily, but a lot of achievements that Facebook has gained today go beyond his expectations Nowadays Facebook is considered to be the social network site of students They use it in their free time to update the latest events happening everyday However, it also means Facebook is having a big influence in their lives That is the reason why many researchers have made studies of Facebook’s effects on them in recent years In a wellknown research, Hui-Tzu Grace and Nicholas Edge (2012), sociologists at Utah Valley University, asked 452 students who usually use Facebook to collect their opinions on fairness in life These two sociologists found out that the amount of time students used Facebook is directly proportional to their pessimistic attitude to life This discovery marked a new step forward studying of Facebook’s effect on students, yet Hui-Tzu and Nicholas could not explain the reasons that made teenagers have a pessimistic view of life due to Facebook Later, in March, nine researchers from Gothenburg Research Institute surveyed more than one thousand students in order to study the influence of using Facebook on self-respect and health Interestingly, they discovered a close connection between Facebook usage and self-respect In other words, spending more time on Facebook makes students have more negative thoughts, but the level depends on living situation of each person (Chenda Ngak, 2012) It can be seen that researchers tend to focus on studying Facebook’s psychological effects on students Therefore, this report is to show both aspects mental and physical Facebook affects, as well as give some typical solutions to its negative effects FACEBOOK TO VIETNAMESE STUDENTS Methodology Participants The participants for this report were one hundred students set up an account on Facebook and Mezing Both of them are two social network sites that attract the majority of undergraduates in Viet Nam ranging in age from 18 to 22 The number 100 was chosen because it was reasonable to analyze Therefore, the result would also be practical and precise This survey last one week from 6th to 13rd June, 2012 Method and Procedure The questionnaire was built up to investigate the use of Facebook on different purposes It was developed based on two researches, which were refered to in Literature Review in order to find out Facebook’s impact on young people, including positive and negative sides The questionnaire was made by an online survey tool which is at http://www.surveytool.com and posted on Facebook account and Mezing accounts Procedure The participants had to answer all the questions by clicking on the choices and typing the answer Their answers were sent to e-mail address After all receiving 100 e-mails, the result was made according to the answers by calculating and then the figures were expressed as percentage FACEBOOK TO VIETNAMESE STUDENTS Results All the charts below were designed to serve two main purposes First, they help to reveal the popularity of Facebook in Vietnam Second, they provide specific data so that people partly can determine Facebook’s effect level on Vietnamese students Figure 1: What kinds of social network you use? The bar chart shows kinds of social network young people usually use It can be seen that there was a big difference in user rate between Facebook and other social network sites More than ninety out of one hundred respondents had Facebook accounts Besides, ZingMe was also popular with twenty-eight percent of participants who often use The most third popular was Blog Y! with thirteen percent Twitter, My Space, and other social network sites such as Tumblr, Hi5 were interested by less people with no more than twenty users The data reveals that Facebook attracts the greatest number of youngster today, even though it was launched a short time ago Figure 2: How often you access Facebook? The pie chart provides information about the frequency of accessing Facebook of young people Ninety percent of respondents log in Facebook everyday, whereas people who access Facebook from three or four times a week and less than three times share the same percent (5%) FACEBOOK TO VIETNAMESE STUDENTS Figure 3: How many hours you spend on Facebook per day? Access hours < hour From to hours From to hours >8 hours Average hours 2,5 10 M= Number of people 17 53 15 15 = 3.725 (hours) Rate 17% 53% 15% 15% The bar chart shows amount of time young people spend using Facebook daily Nearly one-fifth percent of respondents use Facebook more than hours per day They spend at average time (M) of 3.7 hours a day taking part in Facebook’s activities such as: changing status, writing notes, posting new photographs, commenting statuses of other people, etc Figure 4: How many Facebook friends you have? FACEBOOK TO VIETNAMESE STUDENTS Facebook friends < 100 From 100 to 500 >500 Average friends 50 300 600 Number of people 58 33 M = =377 (friends) The bar chart shows the number of Facebook friends that students have It can be seen that more than a half of respondents make friend with other people ranging in quantity from 100 to 500, whereas approximate one-third of them have more than 500 friends There are only people who have less than 100 Facebook friends Averagely, each student has about 377 friends on Facebook That is not a small number, especially when they not know all of their Facebook friends in real life The data also reveals that it will become a serious problem whether students make friends unconsciously on Facebook today Discussion The purpose of this report is to explore Facebook’s popurlarity and its impacts on students Using the survey data collected from one hundred volunteer participants ranging in age from eighteen to twenty-two, I predicted that there were close relationships between Facebook and users’ psychology, health and study These results demonstrate that Facebook plays a big role in students’ lives, as well as to some extent it affects their personal life To examine on which level Facebook is popular with students, I put Facebook usage and other social network site usage in comparision, and investigated the frequency students accessed and used Facebook These were described through three graphs in Figure 1, and Interestingly, I found that the number of students who used Facebook was twice as much as ones who used other social network such as Twitter, My Space, ZingMe, Blog Y!, etc In addition, about nine in ten students FACEBOOK TO VIETNAMESE STUDENTS 10 accessed Facebook daily with the average time of nearly four hours Accessing Facebook seems to become a students’ habit nowadays They update photos, set new status, and even simply log in without doing anything This can be easy to understand because there is not only one way for students to access Facebook Apart from PC (personal computers) and laptop, they are able to use Facebook by mobile phone or Ipad, which has much smaller size than the formers However, if people look at these results closely, it will not difficult to see that this data is totally reasonable when Facebook has been developing rapidly in recent years According to Nicole B Ellison, Charles Steinfield and Cliff Lampe (2007), by 2007 Facebook had more than 21 million active users creating over one billion page views each day Morever, as of November 2006, approximately 22000 organizations had Facebook directories, and more than 2000 American colleges used it as the main site Statistics also showed that Facebook was the seventh most popular site on World Wide Web in that year By the end of February 2012, there have been approximately 845 million people all over the world using this social network site with one billion pieces of content like photos, videos, web links, news, stories, etc sharing daily (Dang Nhan, 2012) The figure of Facebook usage in this research is having a tendency to increase quickly in the next few years That makes people worry whether it can affect and how it affects them, especially youngsters who count for over 60% of Facebook active user Any scientific product has two sides, which are positive and negative, and Facebook is not an exception Firstly, Facebook is created to help students in some aspects of their lives They can find a wealth of reliable information on Facebook, and use it to broaden their knowledge Moreover, students who are hard working also have chance to make friends having the same interest as them by setting up a studying group Thanks to it, they establish more relationships, as well as improve FACEBOOK TO VIETNAMESE STUDENTS 11 communication skills Students can even chat with strangers on Facebook openly; make friends without worrying about the distance, race or gender Another important strong point of Facebook is boosting students’ self-confidence Ashley Day (2011) showed that young people felt better after they updated their Facebook profiles, commented their friends’ statuses Similarly, people who had low self-esteem levels but accessed Facebook frequently felt happier and more connected with their friends Especially, for shy students who often feel uncomfortable chatting face to face, Facebook helps them stamp out shyness and loneliness Obviously, the appearance of Facebook has made a trend that has changed both of student’s lifestyle and communication method It creates favorable conditions for students to share their feelings, thoughts, conception, as well as show their abilities freely According to my survey about the topic “Facebook to Vietnamese students”, I discovered that now Facebook has influenced strongly on students instead of televisions or magazines They attach as much importance to their images built on Facebook as themselves in family and society According to Chenda Ngak (2012), Facebook nowadays becomes an indispensable part of students’ lives; even it has the same position as family, friends or money The question is “Does Facebook have negative effects on them?” Firstly, it causes the decrease in study results This conclusion seems to be against the ideas that believe that people’s brain will develop much better if it contacts with technology tools a lot (Trọng Cầm, 2010) The distraction and loss of concentration on studying when they are on Facebook lead to the limitation to study’s effectivity Sao Linh (2011) showed that students who take part in Facebook’s activities get worse study results than others with the rate of twenty percent For example, student’s mood can be influenced easily by comments from viewers on his status He wonders why those viewers FACEBOOK TO VIETNAMESE STUDENTS 12 comment like that and how to reply as well These thoughts take a lot of time; as a result, he cannot concentrate on doing his homework Since the concept “Facebook” was popular with students, many people have worried that sharing online life is shortening and damaging common communication in modern society despite the fact that Facebook or other social network sites is considered to be a mirror reflecting relationships, helping people make friends, chat with everyone When students spend a wealth of time sending messages and setting status, they lose time standing by their relatives and giving love sentences automatically Lương Nguyễn (2010) argued that Facebook made distance among people longer Although Facebook helps people find old friends after a long time and is special tool to connect them to hundreds of new friends, he believes that this distance is getting longer and longer For instance, people not have to worry about remembering birthdays of anyone because Facebook will remind them one day before their friends’ birthday The only thing they have to is sending “happy birthday” comments My results showed that more than a half of students spend from one to four hours per day taking part in Facebook’s activities This affects their health seriously According to Ashley Day (2011), spending too much time on Facebook makes students feel depressed and get eating disorder Indeed, the more time students spend on Facebook, the more communication skills they lack As a result, they block themselves from everyone and build up online “low-quality” friendships Morever, looking at screen of mobile phones or laptops, which is light constantly can cause amplyopia and myalgia, even shorten life-span There are many advantages that the development of Facebook brings to people, but Facebook itself also provides tools to prevent them In fact, commenting status, photos, and videos can influence on their ego The findings from the research of Harvey Jones and Jose FACEBOOK TO VIETNAMESE STUDENTS 13 Hiram Soltren (2005) demonstrated that students’ lives are violated too much, but they could not find any solution to restrict this Barrack Obama, the President of United States, warned students about privacy on Facebook in the future (Diệu Minh, 2009) He told students to be careful if they wanted to post their information on Facebook because there were a lot of companies which used Facebook to investigate candidates Any unsuitable photo, habit such as drink alcohol, smoke cigarette, etc can make them lose a good job So, they obtain more or lose more when their private lives are shared more and more? Conclusion Strong points that Facebook brings are undeniable Nevertheless, weak points still exist Therefore, management, instruction, advisory and orientation are necessary, along with the development of Facebook In Viet Nam, government has cooperated with the Ministry of Information and Communications in preventing users from accessing Facebook However, it is not successful because young people know very clearly about tricks to escape from this prevention Thus, I suggest three recommendations to this problem Firstly, students need to manage the number of Facebook friends more closely My survey results showed that three-forth of participants did not know all of their Facebook friends in real life They accept any invitation, which is shown on Facebook without caring whether they know those people or not In many cases, this can lead to a lot of unpredictable consequences Secondly, students should be careful with what they want to say on Facebook When students have hundreds, even thousands of Facebook friends, that also means those friends come from different places, with different jobs, characteristics, religions and so on Setting new status probably not affect students a lot, but for other people, they will receive that status at different angles For example, student share a FACEBOOK TO VIETNAMESE STUDENTS 14 song or video of a singer and he gives the criticism about him/her Unfortunately, some people in his friend list on Facebook are fans of that singer When seeing the status, they will think that he does not respect their idol The arguments are unavoidable and they will take him a lot of time Finally, students should arrange time logically In other words, students should give themselves requirements or limitations about time whenever they are on Facebook Besides, they should also spend more time taking part in outdoor activities such as meeting, going shopping, playing sports, hanging out with friends, etc Keeping balance between studying and entertaining is essential for students to have a healthy life References Anna Collier & Larry Magid (2012) “A parent’s guide to Facebook” , Revised 2012 Edition, ConnectSafely: Smart Socializing Starts Here www.connectsafely.org/pdfs/fbparents.pdf [accessed June 2012] Ashley Day (2011) “The Facebook Effect: Good or Bad for Your Health?” Everyday Health http://www.everydayhealth.com/healthy-living/ [accessed June 2012] Doug Fodeman & Marje Monroe (2009) “The impact of Facebook on other students” National Association of Independent Schools: Resourses & Statistics http://www.nais.org/resources/ [accessed 10 June 2012] Harvey Jones & José Hiram Soltren (2005) “Facebook: Threats to Privacy”, 1st ed groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/facebook.pdf [accessed June, 2012] FACEBOOK TO VIETNAMESE STUDENTS 15 Nicole B Ellison, Charles Steinfield & Cliff Lampe (2007) The Benefits of Facebook ‘‘Friends:’’ Social Capital and College Students’ Use of Online Social Network Sites Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication msu.edu/~nellison/Steinfield_Ellison_Lampe(2008).pdf [accessed 11 June 2012] Randall Stross (2009) “When everyone’s a friend, is anything private?” New York Times: Business http://www.nytimes.com/pages/business/ [accessed 11 June 2012] Rebecca R Ruiz (2011) “Facebook’s Impact on Student Grades” The New York Times: Education http://www.nytimes.com/pages/education/ [accessed June 2012] Sao Linh (2011) “Facebook ảnh hưởng xấu đến học tập teen” Báo Mới http://www.baomoi.com/ [accessed June 2012] Sverre Ole Dronen (2012) “New Research obout Facebook Addiction” University of Bergen: News http://www.uib.no/news/ [accessed 11 June 2012] Thoại Mỹ (2011) “Những điều bạn nên biết Facebook” Người đưa tin http://www.nguoiduatin.vn/ [accessed June 2012] Appendix Questionnaire How often you access Facebook? a Everyday (90%) b – times a week (5%) c Less than times (5%) How many hours you spend on Facebook per day? a Less than one hour (17%) b From to hours (53%) c From to hours (15%) d More than hours (15%) How frequently you participate in Facebook activities? a Very frequently (7%) FACEBOOK TO VIETNAMESE STUDENTS Somewhat frequently (22%) Sometimes (36%) Rarely (31%) Never (4%) How you access Facebook? a Laptop (40%) b Pc (18%) c Mobile phones (42%) Which Facebook features you use? a Updating stts, videos, photos b Gaming c Business d Advertising e Others What kinds of social network sites you use? a Facebook b Mezing c Twitter d Blog Yahoo! e Others Why you use Facebook? a Expanding relationships b Using as archive c Commenting d Following the trend e Others What you think about Facebook? a Convenient (40%) b Waste of time (34%) c Neutral (have or not is ok) (26%) Have you ever tried to give up Facebook? a Yes (57%) b No (43%) How you feel when you don’t access Facebook for a week? a Uncomfortable, nervous (36%) b Comfortable (14%) c Normal (50%) How many Facebook friends you have? a Less than 100 (9%) b From 100 to 500 (58%) c More than 500 (33%) In all of your Facebook friends, how many people you know in real life? a All of friend list (27%) b Half of friend list (47%) c One third of friend list, even less (26%) Have you ever forgotten doing homework due to Facebook? b c d e 10 11 12 13 16 FACEBOOK TO VIETNAMESE STUDENTS a Yes (53%) b No (47%) 14 Do you think you are addicted to Facebook? a Yes (59%) b No (41%) 17 ... two question to answer: “How popular is Facebook among Vietnames students?”, “How does Facebook affect their lives?” History of Facebook The predecessor of Facebook is a “Hot or not” version which... thefacebook became a national college network website It became Facebook after the domain was purchased for $200,000 in August 2005 Nevertheless, at that FACEBOOK TO VIETNAMESE STUDENTS time, Facebook. .. associated with Facebook Having said that, students themselves have not been completely aware of the consequences caused by Facebook That is the reason why they still spend much time on Facebook My