Social media websites are a fundamental part of our society's daily lives.  They have become a cultural norm to connect with one another through websites such as Facebook.  However, researches have shown from both positive and negative effects on college aged students contributed by the usage of Facebook. Therefore, this panel strongly recommends to create an awareness program implemented at the high school level to educate students on the health effects on the over indulgence when using social media outlets. Thus, young adolescents may be able to choose to live a well-balanced life in receiving a comprehensive social media education program.

History & Background

Facebook was established in the month of February 2004, by a nineteen-year-old Mark Zuckerberg a student attending Harvard University (Phillip, 2007). Zuckerberg was a keen computer programmer who was known for previously developed social networking websites for fellow students (Phillip, 2007). A couple of them were “Coursematch” which offered users to view people who are working towards the same college degree, and “Facemash” which is a network where you can rate people’s attractiveness (Phillip, 2007). In August 2005, the network became: “Facebook.com” and its address was purchased in the amount of $200,000. There are some disputes regarding the origins of Facebook amongst two Harvard Seniors: Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and a classmate Divya Narendra where they were working on the project and had stalled for a bit and Mark built his own (Phillip, 2007).

In only one day, already 1,200 Harvard students had signed up and created a profile on Facebook (Phillip, 2007). In June 2004, Facebook received its first private investment from a Peter Theil the founder of PayPal for $500,000 with the agreement of an exchange for 10.2% of the company (Zeevi, 2016).  In September 2005, high schoolers over the age of thirteen in the United States could sign up for a Facebook account (Smith, 2016). This social media network, spread worldwide even all the way to the United Kingdom Universities in the following month. Facebook has many purposes and it’s free to join and makes its profit through the advertisements which pop up on the network. It allows businesses, organization, and public figures to connect with their customers and fans throughout this website. Yahoo and Google have tried to buy Facebook out for $2 billion but Zuckerman refused the offer.

Facebook is a social media site where instant communication, connection by a single post and reaching an entire network immediately is convenient. The Facebook tools were built to help people connect with whomever they want and to be able to share what they want which results in the extension of extending relationships. Finding friends, old and new is easy to do when using the advanced search features (Roeder, 2016). Another great feature is the ability to create groups with others that have the same interests as you. By doing so, this can help the world be more open and connected with people they trust and products and services they use (Phillips, 2007). Facebook allows people the power to share and allow their voices to be heard on a different scale. Overtime the goal of Facebook is for the governments to become more responsive to issues and concerns.

The ability to create events and upload pictures or videos to your very own profile is a great way to share personal moments in one’s life. The ability to comment on friends’ posts with the option for privacy and choice of settings (Smith, 2016). Facebook allows for quick access for users through several devices. Cellular phones would be the most popular device, where mobile posts adjust to fit on your screen. If users want to have instant updates when a friend takes action related to their profile or post, Facebook can have sent text messages to your phone with the update. After 6 years Facebook has become one of the biggest websites in the World. 400 million people a month utilize it (Phillips, 2007). February 2012, Facebook was looking to raise $5 billion in investment capital. At this time, there were 845 million active users and the website had over 2.7 billion daily likes and comments.

Positive Effects of Facebook Use Among College Students

Social media is one of the platforms that has a universal meaning.  People can utilize it

for various reasons.  Facebook has made it a better way for individuals to truly express who they are.  With this, students can develop healthy self-identity skills that promote a higher self-esteem.  Facebook has paved the way for our generation to demonstrate our success, values, and family.  This is what makes the ideal human being where one is truly proud and courageous of their journey in life.

        When someone does present themselves in a certain way, they reflect themselves in a manner that makes them feel better.  It is important for one to show an identity to the world.   According to Yang (2016), “Self-presentation is not a static state, but rather an activity sensitive to social and relational contexts.”.  If a young man wants to gain muscles, he would post photos of progress for approval.  With the praise from Facebook followers, he would feel more encouraged to work out and gain satisfaction from positive comments from others.

        Facebook has also allowed individuals to self-reflect on their image and success.  When adolescents are transitioning from high school to college, it is an important time where they reevaluate themselves, set goals, and make a new social circle of friends.  Personal growth is a time where college students learn to make healthier responsible choices, mature, set priorities, and make changes to their behavior.  Many people on Facebook do set the bar of the ideal professional who is respected and makes a decent living helping others.  They may have nice homes, cars, and the perfect body.  Yang (2016) states “The feedback received and the self-reflection activated may have immediate impact on how people think of themselves, and the effect can carry over to their long term self-schema” (p. 405).  People do compare themselves in their social and personal aspect.

How do students get from point A to point B?  It is about knowing your resources that will help achieve your goals and aspirations.  Looking for resources on Facebook is as easy as using a toaster.  One may be looking for tutoring, babysitting, fitness, or business resources and they can find those easily on the Facebook Networking has allowed individuals to communicate with people of different cultures and lifestyles.  If a college student is looking for a decent job, then they can be able to talk with mutual friends on Facebook who work at a place that is hiring. College students can also form “groups” on Facebook where they can share class notes, research material, books, etc.  Author Valenzuela (2009) states “Facebook can fulfill the informational needs of users, a key ingredient for strengthening weak ties and promoting collective action” (p. 881).  Social media has provided that haven where users can simply communicate with others when they are not able to in person.  It is convenient and saves time.

A study was conducted in a college in the southwest of the U.S.  A total of 246 students completed a valid online survey.  Of the study, there were 147 females and 82 male volunteers.  A total of 17 students did not indicate their gender.  Most of the students had an average age of 21 years.  All of the subjects had used Facebook for at least 1 year.  The results of the study were not surprising.  The relationship maintenance variable had the highest mean score of 5.86, followed by impression management with 5.32, entertainment with 5.16, and sense of belonging scoring at 5.14.  The lowest scoring variable was professional use with a mean score of 2.52.  It is apparent that college students utilize Facebook primarily for entertainment and social reasons.  Many students at college are focused on making impressions on others.  Author Namkee (2014) states “Impression management was also a positive contributor to students’ satisfaction with campus life, demonstrating that students’ positive images can enhance their psychological comfort” (p. 616).  Social media will always help students represent themselves in a confident and appealing light.  It will continue to correlate with a higher self-esteem, motivation, and self-reflection.  It is just one more reason to download and use Facebook.    

Negative Effects of Facebook Use Among College Students

Facebook use among college students can unintentionally elicit many negative emotions. College students, along with other individuals in general, engage in social comparison behaviors on a daily basis. Although many times unintentional, individuals find themselves comparing their lives and overall behaviors to superior (upward social comparison) and inferior (downward social comparison) individuals. Facebook upward social comparison generally occurs when college students compare themselves to their peers (Facebook friends) status posts. Whether it is a location they checked into, a new item they purchased, a new job they obtained, a new significant other, etc. such positive posts uploaded by Facebook friends can lead to decreased self-esteem, dissatisfaction with life, frustration, depression and discouragement, jealousy, hostility, and other negative emotions for the comparer (Liu, Li, Carcioppolo, & North, 2016). The reasons being include: stagnant lifestyle by the comparer, jealousy, lack of satisfaction with present lifestyle, etc. These individuals prefer private upward social comparison which requires less effort and is often associated with envy. In this situation, college students avoid asking their friends direct questions because the information is readily available online. On the other hand, downward social comparison usually leads to enhanced self-evaluation and increased self-esteem, along with other positive emotions (Liu, Li, Carcioppolo, & North, 2016).

Other factors such as the type of relationship a student has with the Facebook friends they are comparing themselves with (relational closeness), directly impacts the degree with which upward or downward comparisons is effective. The closer the relationship between the comparer and Facebook friend the greater likelihood an emotion transfer (emotional contagion) will occur. When an emotional contagion occurs, “people can experience the same emotion of others around them as a consequence of mimicking their nonverbal behaviors” (Liu, Li, Carcioppolo, & North, 2016). As a result, college students (comparer) can assimilate themselves with worse-off friends and experience a decrease in self-esteem, self-worth, and overall emotions. It is also important to note that individuals usually release favorable personal information on Facebook; therefore, social comparison is usually biased because the comparer never views the entire picture (Liu, Li, Carcioppolo, & North, 2016).

Aside from causing very noticeable distractions on student’s academic studies and everyday lives, social media use can become an addiction. Current research (Sriwilai & Charoensukmongkol, 2016) indicates Facebook addiction is linked with a strong compulsive component, impaired interpersonal skills, jeopardizes the quality of interpersonal relationships, reduces self-esteem, along with other factors mentioned above. Social media addiction also affects mindfulness and coping mechanisms and can lead to emotional exhaustion. College students who become addicted to Facebook have trouble focusing their attention on any activity for long periods of time because they are distracted by the urge to access Facebook once again. Simple tasks such as walking from one place to another, reading, and engaging in a conversation becomes difficult for these students. With regards to coping, college students who are addicted to Facebook will prefer emotion-focused coping rather than problem-focused coping. Emotion-focused coping generally results in students engaging in further social media use and diverting their attention from stress temporarily. On the other hand, problem-focused coping allows students to eliminate the source of stress (the problem). Ultimately, college students are using Facebook as a buffer against stress which usually leads to emotional exhaustion which “is the state of depletion and fatigue, which is considered a core component of burnout” (Sriwilai & Charoensukmongkol, 2016, p. 429). The continued use of Facebook can lead to inevitable detrimental outcomes that sometimes college students themselves cannot control, if and when this occurs, it important for college students to seek counseling services that can help lower their reliance on social media as a social comparison and coping mechanism.

Education Policy at the High School Level

An educational program at the high school level that raises awareness in regard to social media, particularly Facebook among others, needs to be implemented for important purposes. Students should be aware of the benefits as well as the negative consequences that can come from the misuse of the social media outlet. “The rise of wearable technologies that can capture, store and communicate our day-to-day lives online is expected to further exacerbate the extended chilling effect as surveillance will be more ubiquitous than before” (Marder, Joinson, Shankar, Houghton 2016). This study focused on the effect of social networking sites such as Facebook and its effects. Facebook allows users to put an image of themselves publicly, an image that they believe is a representation of themselves, weather it is accurate or not. Facebook being a public site allows other users to track one's online activity, which may result in people using it with more caution. Additionally, issues such as cyberbullying and posting of private images can lead to detrimental consequences.

Despite the cautionary measures one should consider prior to creating an online profile, there are some valuable means to utilizing the social media outlet. “In contrast to the chilling effect of online surveillance, a ‘warming’ effect (to society) is conceivable. Facebook saliency may have the effect of increasing prosocial behavior such as charitable donations. Such a warming effect, would involve positively directed impression management to approach the expectation of online audiences” (Marder, Joinson, Shankar, Houghton, 2016). High school students can and certainly should be utilizing Facebook in similar positive means; social media is a powerful tool that the youth at best can achieve great feats through. Creating group pages for clubs and organizations, events in regard to social awareness, and posting about current events to educate, are a few of the many ways students can benefit from the use of Facebook.

        In regard to the high school setting specifically, students and school staff alike need to be introduced to proactive means in utilizing Facebook. “Utilizing this assignment, counselors can work collaboratively with clients to examine how their Facebook presence reveals important information regarding their emotional, cognitive, and behavioral responses to events in their lives” (Lewis, Wahesh, 2012). This study touched upon how Facebook use and content can be a means to study an individual and perhaps aid others if need be, in multiple aspects. Questions such as, is one sharing their achievements, loss, happiness, and so forth, can perhaps serve as an outlet of expression for some users. An educational program at the high school setting will simply be a valuable tool that new and current users can benefit from; learning to maximize positive outcomes from social media may serve as a useful rather than an unnecessary time-consuming means in utilizing social networking sites.

Program Implementation

We would begin small and pilot the social media awareness program in one school district and seek available funding through state and federal grants. In order to implement a social media awareness program, we would begin by collecting data from our targeted demographic, which is young adolescents between the ages of 14 - 18 years of age. We seek to know what social media platforms they are using most, (eg., Facebook, Instagram, Plenty of Fish, SnapChat, etc.) and what primary purpose are they using social media. We would design a brief survey to help identify the kind of awareness of education adolescents need. For example, in our survey questionnaire we would look to evaluate and rate whether students feel they could or have been victimized by cyberbullying or sexual harassment. Using the Provictim Scale (Rigby & Slee, 1991, 1993) was used to measure children’s attitudes toward bullying. It contains 10 items and contains 3 subscales that measure the approval of bullying (e.g. “kids who get picked on usually deserve it”), and rejection of weak kids (“nobody likes a wimp”), and support for victims (“it makes me angry when a kid is picked on without reason”).  In addition, we could ask during our data collection process, to what degree do students feel binge drinking or other social issues are more socially acceptable on social media. Following data collection from our student demographic, we would similarity collect data from parents, teachers, and guidance counselors. The goal of collecting data from parents, teachers, and counselors is to gauge their attitudes and beliefs about both the positive and negative impacts of social media. It would be difficult to design a program and implement without the support or “buy-in” from parents, teachers, and counselors. It is important for them to hear some of the findings in our student survey questionnaires to realize there can be a very dark side to social media that can tie very closely to issues they may be concerned about such as bullying, eating disorders, sexual harassment, suicidal tendencies, and/or socially accepted behavior.  In order to further engage parents, teachers, counselors, and the community we would host a town hall meeting address their concerns with the program or any insight. If parents, teachers, counselors, and the community feel they are involved in the groundwork of designing, creating, and implementing such a program geared to bring about the positive and negative effects of social media, they are more likely to be engaged early on. After the initial design, we would then begin a 2-hour training seminar delivered by our team to show teachers and counselors how to deliver the awareness program. Teachers and counselors would begin implementing the awareness program within their curriculum in early October, just after the start of the new school year. We anticipate approximately 8-hours is needed to deliver the social media awareness program covering various topics of concern like cyber bullying, sexual harassment, body image, eating disorders, PTSD, eating disorders, and binge drinking. We would also incorporate the positives of social media in each one-hour session as it relates to the topic, ensuring to show students where to find the necessary resources using social media should they want to explore positive resources.

Once our program has been designed, implemented, we would need to sample some of our students actively involved in our social media awareness program and evaluate their attitudes, beliefs, and overall perception of the program. Continuous program evaluation using a democratic approach and involving students, parents, school administrators and the community would be the approach we would take. Building in and incorporating many positive takeaways by participating in the program such as providing and partnering with community volunteer opportunities, promoting after school extracurricular activities, and promoting school and community resources. Lastly, we think developing student ambassadors within a specified area will help students gain leadership skills and become trained and knowledgeable empowering them to speak against the negatives of social media while providing peer-to-peer guidance.

Overall Effects

The social media awareness program is an attempt to create a comprehensive educational training for the young adolescents while they are between 9-12th grade.  The reality of social media sites such as Facebook is an ingrained part of the human existence.  We have embraced its creation and hailed the marvel of the technological advances as our society marched into socially complicated territories.  According to Tham (2014), “Some studies showed that youths in many countries around the world today continue to spend hours a day on one form of social media or another. These digital natives are readily adopting the technology as the center of their learning, socialization, and communication.” (p. 865).  As the results from the previous arguments presented both the positives and negative aspects of Facebook usage for the youngsters, a comprehensive educational program on the subject matter would be a viable solution to bring balance from the two extremes.

Similar to other platforms such as comprehensive sexual education programs to demonstrate the effectiveness of providing full methodologies for young adolescents to make informed decisions leading to a well-balanced lifestyle.  This is the precise outcome that the social media awareness program will be striving to accomplish.  Since Facebook is currently and may remain as a part of our societal lives in the future, educational professionals should adopt various programs to assist students in simulating outside influences and allow our teens to choose for themselves after a comprehensive conversation.  It has been contended on both sides that Facebook’s contributions to humanity, therefore, it is our responsibility as educated adults to pass on the necessary knowledge to the upcoming generations on issues that will deeply affect them both socially and emotionally in their lives.

In conclusion, Facebook has been a 21st century phenomenon that continuously to challenge our societal perceptions on technology and advancement.  Social media networking sites has pushed us to the edge of social and emotional developments, provides lessons on e-commerce attainments, and at times becomes a pinnacle to people’s outcry for various ideas.  Educators in assorted levels have incorporated Facebook or other social media outlets in their educational process to be part of the technology revolution.  Any obsessive behaviors from young people is a concerning factor, however, it will be our attitudes towards any changes in lives that will define us as a human race not the actual change itself.   

References

Carlson, N. (2010). At last-the full story of how facebook was founded. Business Insider.