Transdisciplinary Inquiry
Can Social Media Affect a Persons Mood or Actions?
The Process
How does my process work?
To see if social media deprivation would truly affect a persons moods or actions, a group of up to 10 participants are investigated. For a full 24 hours, these participants are withdrawn from social media exposure: this means phones, laptops and home computers are off limits for the full day. In this time period of deprivation, the returned feedback from the surveys will display the changes in the participant’s behaviours, habits, emotions and overall condition. Furthermore, an additional survey provided through “Google Form” with a series of questions about “no social media interaction” will provide us with deeper understanding about the effects of this deprivation.
This process works by allowing the participants to go through their everyday routines without any other altered factors other than removal of social media interaction. The participants are asked to write down any differences that are realized throughout the day, both positive and negative. It is also noted if participants succeeded or failed the 24hr social media ban. This data is then incorporated into the survey. The targeted age range is 16-45 year olds as this is the age range that incorporates the most amount of social media in their daily lives. It is expected that the younger half of this age range would experience greater effect from the deprivation as social media plays a large role in social interaction for these younger participants hence a greater change in mood may become evident. It is expected that the older participants would be less affected as they were not raised under the exposure of social media so this short term deprivation would have less of an effect.
Survey
The survey contained a short series of personal questions regarding social media exposure and their opinions on having no access to it. The aim of the survey is to establish a base understanding of the link between age groups and their opinions on the use of social media and the importance of social media to themselves. Although this form of surveying is subjective for the participants, it will still provide an adequate estimate on any links between age groups and the degree they are affected by the lack of social media as well as some insight on which group social media means the most to.
The participants of the survey will be sourced from a group with varying ages, including students from high school and full time working adults. This is to account for different lifestyles and routines as well as different personalities. This would provide a spectrum of different opinions about social media usage and how much a person feels they will be affected without it, hence expanding our understanding of the topic. Ideally, 20-30 people will partake in the survey.
It is expected that younger aged participants would have stronger regard of social media and be affected more by the deprivation than older participants. Furthermore, older participants may not be as concerned about loss of social media as their lives revolve less around the digital media when compared to high school and university students.
From the results; out of the 10 participants, the youngest participant (age 17) forfeited the experiment, lasting 12 hours hence ending her time at 12PM where they could not resist the temptation of using social media. She was the first to give up on this experiment. The change that resulted from the deprivation of social media for this participant included: spending a shorter amount of time in bed in the morning and making them more eager to get ready for school so they had something to do and someone to talk to. The most important note is that they failed the 24hr ban.
The second participant (age 18) also forfeited this experiment, at a later time of 3PM. The main reason was that being away from social media interferes with their lifestyle in school too much as social media is used in interaction with classmates. The change that resulted from the deprivation of social media for this participant included: difficulty in communication with friends, social isolation and a general feeling of awkwardness in many situations where majority of people were using their phones.
The third participant (age 19) was able to successfully last the 24 hours without interaction with social media. However, completing the 24hrs resulted in many problems for the participant throughout the day, mainly attributing to urges to use social media due to habit. The change that resulted from the deprivation of social media for this participant included: Changes in their mood and attitude especially towards their peers. The participant stated that he felt more eager to interact with friends in person rather than everyone staring at their phones. This was especially noted during meals.
The fourth participant (age 20) successfully went through the 24 hours, but still experienced times when they wanted to interact with social media. The change that resulted from the deprivation of social media for this participant included: A drive to be more focused on studying instead of going on “Facebook”. They claimed to have finished their assignment faster than they had expected and went to bed earlier than their usual time since there was nothing else they wanted to do.
The fifth participant (age 20) successfully went through the 24 hours without as much trouble as the fourth participant. The participant was occupied during class and outside of class so interaction with social media became minimal regardless of their own person thirst for it. The regular routine, moods and actions of this participant did not alter much due to the lack of social media interactions but because the routine for that participants day was different from their regular routines even without my intervention, this piece of data does not provide too much understanding about the effects of social media deprivation.
The sixth participant (age 21) successfully completed the 24 hours without social media. There were times where the participant noted wanting to go on social media as a break but had a large work load to complete that day so most of their attention was focused on university work. The change that resulted from the deprivation of social media for this participant included: higher productivity where breaks between study were shorter due to no social media. Longer focus as the thought unread messages etc. did not intervene with productivity and the participant noted a sense of accomplishment from the deprivation.
The seventh participant (age 27) completed the 24 hour experiment without too much trouble since they had a full time job to attend throughout their day. This means that even without intervention, they are not too exposed to social media to begin with. The change that resulted from the deprivation of social media for this participant were not too evident as they did not partake in social media excessively to begin with.
The eighth participant (age 33) completed the experiment easily without much trouble and inconvenience, social media was not the participant’s main way to pass time. The participant had activities outside of work to occupy themselves. The routine, mood and actions of this participant were barely affected. The only note from the participant is the mild inconvenience when it comes to communication where social media would have been useful such as sending a facebook message to a colleague.
The ninth participant (age 40) completed the experiment encountering almost no problems. The participant does not regularly engage in social media use so the deprivation was not significant enough to cause an effect on them. The routine, mood and actions of this participant did not get affected much since they barely had interaction with social media in the first place, so social media use was easily resisted.
The tenth and last participant (age 45) completed the experiment with no issues at all. The participant had tasks to complete the entire day and had no reason to interact with social media even during their free time. From this participant I could tell that social media was not relevant to this persons everyday routine therefore the deprivation had nearly zero significance on this participants moods or actions.
Survey Results, Conclusion, Reflection
Judging from the data the survey gathered from the 22 responses it was clearly shown that majority believes that the lack of social media would affect them even without doing the 24 hour experiment, with over 50% of the graph believing that and 27.3% believing they would not be affected and 18.2% are unsure of the outcome. Responses that was received for this survey was also people that are mainly users who constantly interacting with social media on a day to day basis, meaning accessing to social media is something they do consistently through out their day. Majority of this survey was done between the ages 19 and 20 which both totaled 22.7% (5) of the surveyors, then ages 18 and 21 which both totaled 13.6% (3) of the surveyors, then there was 2 aged 24 surveyors which totaled 9.1% of the surveyors then the ages 12, 28,29 and 55 each totaled 4.5% (1) of the surveyors, as shown above it is clear that the majority of the users are teenagers that clearly shows that social media has a stronger influence to the participants of those ages. Judging from the responses behind why the participants think why they can or cannot last a day without social media shows that it plays a big part of their day to day life, the responses shows loneliness, friendship, social interaction and communication for teenagers of this day and age is a crucial part to them and they do no not think that the separation of that is something they could cope with.
To conclude, this survey did indeed answer the question of social media having affect on the public once social media lost to them since it is their main source of connections to friends and work, this data may not be accurate since it is based on a small sample of surveyors at roughly the same age, so if the age group was wider the results I feel would definitely change since the age group would expand and the older a person may have a different perspective towards social media, the surveyors surveyed may also have a change of the outcome since it is a small sample of surveyors, they maybe less connected towards social media therefore changing the data again. But it was surprising to see that the public generally believe that without social media for even one day could greatly affect them without even having barely any doubt that there is a chance that they could resist it, this further shows evidence towards on social media having affects on people, since they generally believe that they cannot resist their thirst for it.
If this survey would be done again, the changes that could change it for the better where the data could be more accurate would be to ask for a variety of age groups since the results from this survey are mainly teenagers the adult age may be the same but since there were not enough adults participating in this data the results are still unknown. The amount of questions could be increased to have a better understanding of each individual surveyor and the questions asked could be changed to be more relate able and could have a bigger variety of answers each surveyor could answer instead of close ended questions. Open ended questions such as, what would you do without your phone?, What do you do when your phone runs out of battery and cannot be charged at the time being? and beside from interaction with social media what is second thing that comes to your mind when you're on your phone? All these different questions could lead many different answers with the surveyors own personality into the answers making them more unique and accurate to how they truly feel.
The Results
(24Hr-Experiment)
Conclusion
Reflection
Overall this experiment was a proven success to figure out if social media has an affect a persons mood or actions, it was shown that social media could indeed affect a persons mood and actions based on the failures of the first two participants, the other participants managed to pass the 24 hours but some still had temptations to interact with social media, but it was shown that the older participant from ages 27 to age 45 shown that social media had little to no affect on their mood or actions, on the other hand, social media had the most affect on those who are at the younger age group, age 17 to 20 age, shows the biggest changed to their mood and actions to the point where interacting with social media is a must for them to the point of them giving up on the experiment due to their temptations. To conclude it is proven that social media affects those at the younger age group and starts to lose affect as the age gap begins to widen, and the predicted hypothesis was proven correct that the older participants would be less affected by social media due to the fact that there were less interaction with it at a earlier age, also the younger participants being affected more due to them being surrounded by social media at a earlier age.Majority of the participants are teenagers from ages 17 to ages 21 meaning that if the sample size was bigger and the age gap was more even the results may vary. Also each participant that was experimented on for this experiment was only for a full day, their maybe days where they are less interactive with social media due different schedule or factors, so if this experiment was done again on the same participants the results may also vary.
Hate it
The experiment answered the question that was being investigated upon, but after completing it, there are changes and adjustments that could be done differently to improve the data collection and to have more accurate data if this experiment was done again. Change that could be made would be to not completely isolate to participants with their cell phones since that device serves more purposes rather than going on social media such as playing games, photos and video, by completely isolating them from their cell phones does not just stop them from interacting with social media but rather other necessary functions that are used with a cell phone, so an adjustment that could improve the accuracy of this data would be to stop a person from going on the internet, with that the person would only be limited to going online but not completely stopping them from doing every day task they use on their cell phones. A bigger participant pool and age span would definitely make a difference in results, but what could also be adjusted would be the amount of time the participant could not interact with social media for, if the time was shortened to six hours or increased to three days the results from each participants would surely differ.