How much does social media affect us?

Now a days consumers and suppliers can view products online. Part of someone's product research now involves getting the opinions of friends and peers through social media. In fact, a social media contact may now be the first place some people hear about your product or service. Through social media consumers can voice their opinions and ask for customer service through a message. By doing so this is affecting our interpersonal and communication skills. We are not onlying using social media as a social tool but also as a researching tool. Word of mouth no longer involves face-to-face contact. It has become "send me a link."  So as consumers we are getting into the habit of using social media and resources to get our questions answered and no verbal communication. 

Angeli O'Day
11.29.12

Which Addict are you?

Thanks to Marketo, a marketing software company, we now can categorize nine social media addicts as well as their symptoms. It is quickly to point the finger and call someone else a "Facebook Addict" because they change their status every five minutes, but their are other addicts as well. Social Media sites and this new way of communicating has been affecting lives without the realization of it. Below is a summary of the nine social media addicts and their symptoms.

1. The Alert-Lover: Receives alerts on phone and loses complete focus when phone receives a notification.

2. Social Guru: Claims to know everything about Social Media sites and even illustrates the title on personal business cards.

3. Verb Creator: Constantly stating that you need to upload pictures, make statues and tweet everything someone says.

4. The Vowel Hater: Removing all vowels in order to get the most out of the 140 character limit on Twitter. This incorrect spelling now rolls over into papers, emails, and other important documents.

5. The Blog Referencer: Refuses to answer questions directly because they would rather write an insightful blog and refer people to look their for your answer.

6.The Self-Proclaimed Influencer: Get excited about providing useful information on social media sites.

7. Multi-Mayor: Constantly "checking in" to every restaurant and establishment to become well known there.

8. The Liker: Instead of commenting on status and pictures, the liker simply "likes" post.

9. The Constant Checker: Always checking phone for updates on social media sites without regard of the company you are keeping. This can affect job opportunities because you are checking your phone during interviews or walking into an interview.


 Natalie 11.26.12      

How to Really Know if You're Addicted

How do you really know if you're addicted to the internet?

There's many tests that let you answer questions and they generate how addicted you are based on the answers you chose, all done on the internet, ironic huh?

The real way to know if you're addicted to the internet or media, in a broader sense, is actually disconnecting yourself from it. For someone who's not addicted to the internet, this can seem like a task, but those that are, the idea is daunting. Many people don't like to be separated from media and the internet, but can do it if they have to. Now, if you start hyperventilating, going insane, showing withdrawal symptoms, craving, elevated anxiety, etc., you may be addicted.

What if we all separated ourselves from the internet and media for a day? How peaceful or dreadful would that day be for you?

A University of Maryland study did just that for about 200 students. They had to give up all media for 24 hours. Many of the students realized they were addicted and felt the need to have media.

Let's try it. Let's see if we can go 24 hours without the internet, I won't take it as far as all media for you all. Good luck!

Mariyah Hargrove
11/18/2012

Negative Effects of Internet Usage on Child Development

We have discussed the many types of Internet addiction and several addictive social networking sites, but can the Internet actually negatively effect child development? According to Verdick.org, the answer is yes. Recent studies show that teenagers are much more likely to access the internet for gaming, music downloading, and social networking than their parents. Children, even younger are accessing the Internet in prime physical, mental, and social development ages, and psychologists are becoming concerned about the effects it may have on developing bodies and minds. 

The Impact on Physical Development 
Hands on experiences, crucial to the development of cause and effect relationships and conversation are not present on the internet. The more a child experiences virtual interaction, rather than hands on, real life experiences, the less the child is going to develop these physical skills. Young children benefit from receiving small bits of information, and sorting through the information in a sequential manner. The internet provides vast amounts of information and overloads the mind with too much information at once, not allowing the young mind to process sequentially, and causing fatigue and confusion. 

The Impact on Cognitive Development
Information found on the internet is uncontrolled, and not only is it sometimes lawless, but there is also the risk of it's reliability. Children are unable to test reality in the virtual world, and are therefore unable to distinguish between what is and is not real. Children over using the internet have become accustomed to "text language" which is negatively effecting their formal writing in school. Also, Plagiarism has become increasingly common among internet using school-aged children and teens.

The Impact on Social Development 
Although the internet is an important tool for everyone, and has caused the advancement of just about everything we do in life, the overuse and abuse of the internet can distract from social activities such as homework, chores, and real life relationships with friends and family. Not only can it serve as a distraction, but also can be a very negative influence on social behavior. Pornography, hate messages, profanity, and much more undesirable content is readily available on the Internet, and has become popular among children and teens. Monitoring is strongly advised when allowing young children to access the internet. 

The internet is a positive technology in many ways, and has helped to improve the way we live and learn. These negative effects are only a concern in overusage situations, and can be avoided with regulation, and close monitoring. 

Ashley Rulick
11/18/12
Source: Verdick.org
image courtesy: iamemme.blogspot.com

Severe case of Internet Addiction...

In South Korea, internet addictions were mostly said to appear in teenagers until a married couple took the addiction to the extreme. The South Korean couple met online and even created virtual worlds to interact in. Though, I would think that reality is much better than a virtual world, this couple would spend hours at an Internet Cafe interacting virtually with each other and others. An Internet Cafe is a place where there are a bank of computers for public use. Though this couple had a new born child at home, one night they departed to an Internet Cafe to role-play in a virtual reality for twelve hours and came home to a deceased new born baby.
Though the number of teenager internet addicts have declined dramatically, the opposite has affected the 20-30 age bracket. South Korea is huge on gaming and actually promotes gaming to many countries to use.




Natalie Bobian 11-10-2012

How is Facebook addiction affecting our minds?

Facebook addiction have been documented and is a severe addiction that people cannot stop. Receiving and answering a notification results in a hit of dopamine, a chemical neurotransmitter associated with the motivation and reward response in the human brain. Dopamine is also released in high quantities when we consume drugs or have sex. Social media notifications can have the same addictive effect. In Asia “Internet Addiction Disorder” is already accepted as a psychological diagnosis. Next year it will be included in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders. Facebook and Internet addiction can have damaging effects, such as a decrease in our attention span. Since 2000, our collective attention span has decreased by 40%. This statistic is very believable because I find myself not paying attention in class and on Twitter or Facebook trying to keep updated. 

Angeli O'Day
Nov. 7. 2012

Nine Ways to Defeat your Twitter Addiction

If you have found that Twitter has become less of an occasional way to connect with others, and more of a compulsion or dependence, you may be addicted to Twitter. Here are Nine Steps to beat your Twitter addiction:

1. Decide whether you are addicted. If you've got one or more of the common warning signs of being addicted to Twitter, you may be in need of a Twitter reality check. These warning signs include:

• Feeling like you're "nothing" without your tweets, and you must tweet no matter what, even if you don't want to. 
• Insignificant things MUST be tweeted. i.e.- "this morning I woke up".
• People without Twitter are losers and not deserving of your time, Twitter is your day, the rest of what could have been your day is arranged around it.
• You MUST find someone else to tweet for you when you are unable.
• When Twitter is down, you are down, and the worst part is you can't even Tweet about it!!
• You have a lot of unfinished projects, yet you are still compelled to Tweet away your time.
• You find yourself unable to stop, even though you (and your peers) know Tweeting is becoming a problem.
• Your relationship with Twitter is growing stronger than the ones in real life

2. Own up to your Twitter addiction. Yes, it's a cliche that half the battle is admitting the problem but not acknowledging it means you won't change the behavior. And before you rush to tweet that you have a Twitter addiction, by all means admit it to yourself but remember that there's no need to tell the world.

• Tweeting about your Twitter addiction is an invitation for others to comment, and make light of the situation. You will get responses like "haha. I'm an addict to", or "We can be addicts together," which will minimize the importance of your realization, and could be a detriment to recovery.

3. Plan your Twitter time. Allow yourself to set an amount of time every day, reserved for Twitter. (i.e.- 15 minutes every three hours, or one single hour every day when you are done with everything else). Set precise Tweeting times (i.e.- 12:00 every day) and stick to the allotted times.

4. Plan for "Pure Twitter Time". Avoid using Twitter while multitasking. When tweeting while multitasking, Twitter becomes a distraction, and a reason to not fully focus on whatever else you are doing. Also, when multitasking, we tend to downplay how much time we are wasting on each task. You could be spending much more time doing nothing productive, but if you have a book open, you are "studying".

5. Fire your Twitter Supporting Cast. Anything you have aquired that makes Twitter easier to access, get rid of it! These include: Tweetie, TwitterBerry, TweetDeck, TwitterFon, PocketTweets, & ceTwit. These applications make it easy to access Twitter from literally anywhere. Get rid of them and you will thrive.

6. Turn Twitter Into a Hobby Not a Habit. Make Twitter your weekend indulgence. You will make more time to get things done during the week and look forward to your weekend only Tweets. This will make you more productive during the week, and help create more creative and interesting Tweet topics for your weekend post. 

7. Spend Time Away from TMI (too much information.) Constantly being bombarded with messages from others can create anxiety, hyperawareness, and worry. You need a little information free time to take the edge off. Spend some quite alone time sitting under a tree, or in a quite place WITHOUT your phone. Gaaaasp!

8. Realize that You are Not Alone. More people are suffering from a Twitter addiction than you think. Be kind to yourself in realizing that others have been here already; the evolution of social networking means that many people continue to keep revising how to balance Twitter in their busy lives. Keep your perspective about Twitter's place in your life at the forefront of your mind and ask yourself...

• What have you given up for Twitter? Was it an inane pursuit like watching too much TV, or something that mattered, like writing, exercise, reflecting, or spending time with people? The answer to this question may help you to find the necessary motivation to take the time and energy to make adjustments.

9. Quit Twitter. If you've tried everything else and Twitter is still coming before the mowed lawn, the descaling of the shower, and the ironing of work clothes, then you might have to switch it off permanently. If you don't know how to leave, here's how:

• Log in to Twitter
• Click "Settings"
• Click "Deactivate my Account" at the bottom of the page
• Enter your password when prompted. (Without the correct account password, you will not be able to deactivate an account.)
• Verify that you really want to do it. If you've come this far, then you do. 
• Have your life back! 

Sources and photo credits (wikihow.com)

Ashley Rulick 11/4/12

How to Find Out if You're Addicted

One of the worst things a doctor can do is to diagnose someone with a condition and that person doesn't even have it. This is the case many times. With this disturbing news, doctors have implemented many tests BEFORE they diagnose anything. Internet addiction is no different. There are various tests you can take to see if you're addicted to the internet. The ones found on the internet aren't as accurate as if a doctor was screening the test, but the give you a little insight. For the fun of it, I too, took the Internet Addiction Test at http://www.netaddiction.com/index.php?option=com_bfquiz&view=onepage&catid=46&Itemid=106.

After receiving my score, I was recorded as an average user, which is the lowest score or means I am not addicted to the internet. Each of your answers have a number that is added at the end of your test and determines your level of addiction. I received a score of 27. Try it out and let us know what's your score!

Mariyah Hargrove

Sunday, November 4, 2012