Reading the exploratory essay by a student named James Gardiner was somewhat enlightening. In this essay, he highlighted some research that he had begun to do regarding Online Social Networks for a major paper that he was working on.
His research included several independent studies and surveys that were conducted, mostly with teenagers and young adults. These studies touched on topics from personal information provided online in the social network atmosphere, to how this arena of socializing might affect communication skills, and plenty of other pro and con aspects in between.
My favorite part of Gardiner’s essay was the statement from Graham Bowley, an author from the Financial Times international business newspaper. According to Bowley, young people were using online social networks “to reinforce existing relations with the group of friends they already had from their offline lives. For them, MySpace had become and electronic version of the local mall or park, the place they went to with their friends when they just wanted to hang out”. Bringing back my youthful mall memories, this instantly helped me equate how and why the newer generation utilizes online social networks.
Still unsure of his thesis for his final project, Gardiner intended on continuing his research on OSNs. He felt he needed to investigate more on the negative aspects of OSNs and then wrote an argument on this topic.
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