Presenter(s): Michael Silver
Faculty Mentor(s): Kate Harmon
Poster 110
Session: Social Sciences & Humanities
Social isolation as a result of social network use is a problem that has gained much media attention, but we don’t know how deeply rooted this problem is or how to approach it. While researchers previously have found our online lives cause socially isolating feelings, I would like to discover potential solutions in incentivizing a more meaningful online experience for our youth. Using an online survey and offering continuous focus groups over summer I hope to engage directly with Social Media Users to find out how we can best redesign key social media features to bring value to users’ online experience. There are strong indications that the current social networking model has some socially isolating features, while only specific use scenarios actually provide a positive benefit to the user. My hypothesis is that one-click features of social media usage are more socially isolating than others. To gather participants I plan to advertise a survey that asks to scale a social media user’s state of mental well-being as well as their social media usage for each particular social site and feature. After the survey has enough responses I will be able to use a Chi-squared test and dummy variables to deduce which features of social media are more socially isolating than others. Then using focus groups that will be held monthly I should be able to gather additional anecdotal evidence in figuring out which ways are most beneficial in bridging the gap between our digital and real-life experiences, so they can co-exist and complement each other. Learning from the past, I believe a brand new social network can be specifically re-designed to embrace the positive merits of social networking and bring value to the users themselves.