Pre-Thesis Week 3: Start Researching

After last week’s one-on-one meeting, I confirm my topic for thesis is about negative effects of social media, especially negative feelings to Chinese young people aging around 24. Professor Ahmed provided some links of data reports and news which enabled me to further understand the current circumstance of Chinese young people using social media and situations compared with worldwide countries. After reading these articles, some of my initial hypothesis changes.

At first, I decided to research on the group who age form 18 to 24, using Wechat frequently which results in negative feelings of anxiety and isolation. But through reading data reports, it shows that the largest group using social media in China is 25–50, so I decided to further explore their user habits and feelings in different ages and then determine my research group. For now, I only found one report which is about the relationship of depressive feelings and social media. And the reporter surveyed 16,205 Chinese adolescents in 2013–2014. What impressed me is that the extent of depressive feelings caused by social media greatly depends on gender and economic development. To be more clearly, girls living in more developed area, especially eastern area in China, might be affected more. I planned to read more similar research of social media platform demography. And I wish to focus more on user’s personal feeling instead of using habits and facts to understand how people in different age confronted various kinds of negative feelings.

At the same time, it is also important to recognize that digital media typically replaces time spent in cultural activities, sports and interpersonal transactions with solitary time and seclusion. This might be a crutial cause of the problem that I previously neglected.

In another article about FOMO, fear of missing out, I found this situation general among young people and this could cause the vicious circle between social media overuse and negative feelings. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7504117/

For next steps, I would continue to research of negative effects of social media focusing on these questions:

• Research effects on different groups of people to determine the focused group for the thesis.
• Feelings people have while using social media.
• The process or reason of social media bringing these feelings to people.
• Measures taken by users or govenment to prevent negative effects.

And I’m still finding a good way to record and organize articles and reports that I have read.