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Holly Collier Instructor: Malcolm Campbell English 1102 February 4, 2013 Inter Topic Proposal: Internet and Social Medias affects on Todays World Introduction/Overview How do the use of social media sites and the Internet contribute to the ways in which people communicate, and identify themselves on and offline? I will be doing my research on the ways on which the Internet and social media sites affect peoples communication and individual identities. I want to focus on how the lack of communication between people will harm people in the future when it comes to job interviews, and how it will harm those who are in the work force today. Studies show that people are becoming much more reliant on texting or emailing and are losing their communication skills for face-to-face discussions. The people I will be focusing on are the citizens who are between in middle school and above. I wont be focusing as heavily on the senior citizens because they typically dont use the Internet or social media sites as much as your average U.S citizen. I will research and read stories where peoples communication skills are proven to be weakened, I will also search for cases where students or adults have been living under a fake online identity for various reasons. These stories and cases take places all over the world. There is not a specific or particular place where communication levels are the lowest, or where fake Internet identities are the highest. Jeffrey Kluger says in his article that from the year 2000 to 2010 the average number of texts sent monthly went from 14 billion to 188 billion for people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-nine. Internet Identities have become a problem due to the creation of

Comment [A1]:

Comment [A2]: This seems like a very broad topic. As I read further, I realized that you narrowed it down quite a bit and specified what you wanted to research, I would just recommend revising the title.

Comment [A3]: I think this is very important and will be very interesting to research.

Comment [A4]: Is middle school to early to start worrying about jobs? I know they are considered our future, but I feel like you will find more research within an older generation.

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Facebook in 2004. Brad Stone and Ashlee Vance interviewed Mark Zuckerberg, the launcher of Facebook, discussing how in just eight short years Facebook now has one billion users. Through the creation of Facebook living under a false identity had become much more common and much easier to accomplish. Heather Kelly states in her article that there are 83.09 million fake Facebook accounts. 14.3 million of these accounts are considered to be Undesirable meaning the accounts are intended for spamming or spying. The article also states that 1.5% of all active Facebook accounts are troublesome. These troublesome accounts are generally the accounts of people purposefully portraying themselves under a fake identity. The preliminary research I have done has included mainly articles, and interviews. Reading these articles and interviews did help me a lot with understanding the time period around the boom in the use of the Internet and Social Media sites. I also began to understand more about the results and affects that the Internet and Social Media sites are having on our society as a whole. Coming across these understandings I realized that most of the things I learned do compare very closely to my initial ideas regarding this topic. There are many different views and opinions regarding this topic. Many people highly support the use of the Internet and Social media sites for many different reasons. Those who support the Internet and social media sites say that the sites promote interaction with friends and family. They say the sites offer teachers and students valuable access to educational support and materials. Maris Johnston says along with her nonprofit support group that Facebook is a good source because its a good way to get the word out. The opponents of social networking say that the sites prevent face-to-face communication, waste time, and make children more prone to ADHD. The opponents also think that the use of these sites exposes users to predators and burglars.

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Initial Inquiry Question(s) Does using the Internet completely in most college classes help or hurt students education? How does the use of the Internet and Social media site affect the ways in which people communicate and function today? Are people beginning to rely on online communication? By opening the door for people to create false identities, which could harm others or themselves in the future, does the use of Facebook and other sites influence peoples desires to live under these false identities? How does the use of these sites affect the way children, teens especially view themselves? Have there already been cases where peoples communication skills have weakened due to the overuse of the Internet and Social media sites. How do these False Identity cases affect not only the individual, but also the people who they socialize with online?
Comment [A5]: Does this clarify the job search thing?

My Interest in this Topic Im interested in researching how the use of the Internet and Social Media sites affect people today. How it influences their outlooks and actions and how it affects their communication skills. This specifically relates to me because I grew up in the generation that was initially exposed to the daily use of technology and the Internet. Im very interested in how much teens especially engage in Social Media sites. Im not saying they use it the most but I feel like teens are influenced the easiest. They can be hurt and roped in to predators, a lot of teens dont have very much self confidence with means anyone who compliments them or shows interest in them they dont think twice about who they really could be, they believe what they see. Fake identities and predators on the Internet are very interesting to me. Social Media sites make it so easy for people to get hurt, in todays world there are fake identity and predator
Comment [A6]: Me too.

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cases happening everyday. Theres even a T.V show now about online relationships and in every episode one of the people are caught in a lie, of either acting as a completely different person or just using someone elses face as their own. I dont know that much about the influence the Internet and social media sites have on people, all I know are stories Ive heard. The communication skills and Social media sites come along with so many different opinions that its hard to find clear answers or studies because or the many differing opinions. I want to learn about how people dont realize they are losing their communication skills or how they dont think before forming relationships with someone theyve only seen online.

Next Steps How does the use of the Internet and Social media site affect the ways in which people communicate and function today?

In order to find more research about my topics I plan to read many different debates or conversing articles regarding the positive and negative factors of the Internet specifically communication and false identities. Newspaper articles and journals will also be very beneficial to me. I really hope that I can find articles both supporting and opposing the topics. Answering the question above will come from reading these articles and journals.

RESEARCH CITES: SUE SCHEFF: http://www.examiner.com/article/teen-texting-and-communication-skills JEFFREY KLUGER: http://techland.time.com/2012/08/16/we-never-talk-anymore-theproblem-with-text-messaging/

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HEATHER KELLY: http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/02/tech/social-media/facebook-fakeaccounts/index.html BRAD STONE, ASHLEE VANCE: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-1004/facebooks-next-billion-a-q-and-a-with-mark-zuckerberg#p1 http://socialnetworking.procon.org/#Background MARIA JOHNSTON: http://ms-ds.com/our-thinking/insights/beyond-and-followengaging-nonprofit-supporters-through-social-media

Hey Holly, I think you have some really interesting ideas. I personally think that they are a little broad, but I REALLY like the one you said in the beginning about the influence that it has on our work force. I think that our generation will have a very difficult time with all of the technology that we were introduced to, and I think that it would be so interesting to learn about this. I think you went above and beyond with your shitty first draft. I think you have a lot to work with here. Good job.

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