Research Proposal Example: History of Social Media

The history of social media is traced on many years back where people used it to advance their goals in the world. Nowadays, the term social media is a term which is well known by many people across the globe with at least the most remote places hearing the social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. The first social media platform to exist in the world was known as Six Degrees, and it was referred to the Six Degrees after the Six Degrees of Separation theory. The social media site was used from the year 1997 to 2001. The Six Degrees site worked by enabling its users to create a profile and finally friend other users on the platform. It even went to the extent of allowing those people who never registered the users to confirm the friendship, and it went on connecting to a few3 people in this format.

The era of blogging and instant messaging was the next from the Six Degrees. During this reign, the people were able to communicate with one another with a blog, and this lasted for a few number of years after its inception. It was easy for the people to blog others doing instant messaging and this made communication somewhat faster and efficient to people across the world. The word blog was advanced by Jorn Barger, who was the first blogger of Robot Wisdom, a social media platform (Valkenburg, Peter, & Schouten, 2006).

The internet is now everywhere across the world and by the year 2000, approximately hundred million people had access to the internet, and this made a high number of people to engage socially in the existing social media platforms. The individual's used chat rooms with other online friends and this chat rooms were used to make friends, having conversations based on their topic and was also used for dating purposes. In the early 2000 s, Myspace was the most popular media platform that was being used, and even a small number of people employed it today, though cant be equated to the people using Facebook and Twitter nowadays. LinkedIn is also one of the social media websites which were used in the begging of early 2000, and it is being used today to connect with people across the world.

Mark Zuckerberg, in 2004 launched Facebook which today has turned to be the biggest social media website connecting many people in the world currently and it boasts over a billion users in the world as a whole. Since 2004, Facebook has advanced in technology by enabling its user to communicate efficiently with another online user in the globe more comfortably. The users can chat, make both audio and video calls via Facebook and thus make conversations real and more efficient. Today there are many social media platforms which serve different purposes but pass a specific information to the intended group of users within the platform. Some social media platforms ideally are more popular than others. Instagram commonly referred to IG by many people is relatively popular than other social media platforms, and people communicate best through the photographs they post and Twitter, a social media platform works by a few character of information which is passed to the other users within the platform (Irving, 1990).The effect of social media on Self Esteem

Social media has a significant impact on the self-esteem of people globally which ranges on from children to adults. The impact of the social media effect on the self-esteem of the individuals can either be positive or negative depending on a particular person. It has been observed over the years that social media sites have many negative repercussions on the users across the world and it is being attributed to the change of behavior of the people who usually use the social; media platforms as compared to the people who do not engage in this social media platforms. A high number of researchers and observers believe that after the rise in the in the usage of the social networking platforms, many people have turned to be the victims of lower self-growth and self-esteem (Steinfield, Ellison, & Lampe, 2008).

Social media can affect self-esteem in the following ways;

The battle for likes

Many online users apart from using the social media platforms for other intended purposes, they use it for attention. When the users use the social media platforms for recognition, it can sometimes be so hurtful to the people. The number of likes a person gets after making a post or putting the photographs on the platforms, it can either increase or decrease ones self-esteem. For instance, if the user gets a few number of likes say three, the user will feel aggrieved why the three and thus will feel less human compared to the other users who get a higher number of likes. An individual with a post with fewer likes he or she will few that the outlook of him or she is not well enough compared to others, and this will make them not to have such posts in the future as it will result to the fewer number of likes as before. Alternatively, if a person posts something and gets fewer number of likes, he or she will look rejected by the society which will end up to self-worth a person and thus lower self-esteem. People feel the anxiety of the number of likes they get in a post compared to the other people (Hobza, Walker, Yakushko & Peugh, 2007).

The Perfect Life

According to the researchers from the Institut Pluridisciplinaire Hubert Curien, discovered that the number of time spent on the social networking site such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram among others in regard of ourselves to others, the more depressed we become and hence lower self-esteem. This information was published in 2013 article in the PLoS One in France. The people dont take into account what they see in the social platforms, is not what is depicted in real life from especially the celebrities across the world. People tend to post the brands, the versions of people which they not in real life and among those people are our close family members, relatives, and friends. The best experience orchestrated by those people makes other online users feel depressed hence resulting in low self-esteem. The people tend to forget that those best looks from the celebrities, family, friends, and relatives might have been taken so many years ago say ten years (Wilcox, & Laird, 2000).

The Ads

From the research conducted in the University of Chicago which was posted in the Journal of Consumer Research, advertising has broadly proven to impact on the self-esteem of an individual. There is target advertising on the social media sites which are intended to influence people to purchase specific brands of products, and a person may feel and think in a certain way (Bessenoff, 2006). The targeted advertising will make the people believe in a particular manner regarding the product being advertised in the Television or the other social media platforms, and therefore this will end up impacting of the self-esteem of an individual. The targeted advertising will make a person purchasing a wrong product which will end up not serving him or her according to the extent expected of it. The buying of the faulty product will make the social media user stop relying on the media since it does not serve his or her course. This will generate a false perspective on a person who will end up seeing the social media site as not useful and thus creating lower self-esteem.

The False Connections

Social media platform at times they may give people a false sense of belonging to a society which is not built on the real reality in the world, this is according to Sherrie Campbell, a renowned psychotherapist in the United States of America. People make connections from all over which is not real and this creates a person to feel that the friendship materializes to nothing and therefore portrays social media as a platform doomed to oblivion. The false connections will negatively impact on the users within the platform, and hence they will start building the hypothesis on how the platform does not depict what it is supposed to show (Shaw & Gant, 2002). The false connections do not bring any meaningful coexistence of the users within the platforms. The false friendship created online will make a person see the social media sites as fake, and therefore an individual will tend to portray it as a waste of time hence no self worth and lower self-esteem.

The folly of the tutorials

Social media is a sea of information which enables and makes its easier for people to learn and do things as other people have done before. Organizations and individuals post their tutorials on their channel; where people will be able to extract the same content to use it in a similar way as those who had posted it. The tutorials are made by experts in those particular fields who have advanced knowledge in those areas. The social media users will also be eager to gain the information from one specific field to their advantage (Kramer, & Winter, 2008). People will use the information from that site but because they, not experts, they may not be able to do it to satisfaction as was done by those experts, this will end up making someone see himself or herself as self-unworthy, and it will go on lowering the self-drive and self-esteem of an individual. Enacting the tutorials will be a beginner is bound to fail because one is not an expert in the said field. The low self-esteem will make an individual not to try that next time since he or she is not able to handle it initially.

The Interruption of our emotional lives

The most things which people do are usually interrupted by the social media sites, those things including and not limited to watching how kids play, hanging with family, relatives, and friends, learning something new in college among others. People tend to document all the right things they do all over social media for people to see as to give the acknowledgement. This makes people experience negative consequences such as interruption of the sleeping cycle, eating disorder and depression as per Jodie Gummow in the article of the AlterNet. People wanting to be praised sometime cant apply and therefore makes the people feel not recognized and in the social media sites and hence contributing to low self-esteem and self-unworthy (HendersonKing, 1997).

Recommendation

The social media sites need to be regulated to ensure only the approved content is the one is allowed to the users especially the targeted advertising which makes people purchasing what they never desired. The social media users also should learn not to be carried away by emotions of the postings they do because social media has its positives and negatives in real life to any individual. The social media sites should also create a mechanism of appreciating its users for example how Facebook does by congratulation someone of some friends made at such a particular time.

Conclusion

Social media effect on self-esteem has majorly adverse effects on the social media users. Social media impacts a high number of people because a number of them are subscribed to the social media sites, and there cant evade its consequences which may be negative or positive. The sites should be used without emotions of any kind as it will generate to lower self-esteem and self unworthy. The platforms need to be structured as to have more positive attributes where a majority number of people derive the happiness; this is according to the utilitarian theory (Barker, 2009).

References

Valkenburg, P. M., Peter, J., & Schouten, A. P. (2006). Friend networking sites and their relationship to adolescents' well-being and social self-esteem. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 9(5), 584-590.

Barker, V. (2009). Older adolescen...