Does the Frequent Use of Social Media Impact the Verbal Communication Skills of Adolescents with Adults?

Overview

Objectives/Goals The purpose of this study is to determine if social media and its frequent occurrence in adolescence lives impact the adolescence themselves in their ability to verbally communicate with adults such as their parents, teachers, or grandparents. My hypothesis is the frequent use of social networking sites (Twitter, Facebook, & Instagram) will impact the adolescence verbal communication skills when they talk to adults. Methods/Materials The main materials I used to conduct this study were a class set of iPads to take the survey, a statistical calculator to randomly assign participants from my school's junior class, and a google account to use google spreadsheets to analyze the data. I randomly assigned 160 participants but only 67 returned the consent forms and were able to take the survey. Those that returned the consent forms were excused for ten minutes from their forth period class on a friday to take the survey on the class set of iPads. The survey usually took five to ten minutes for the individual to complete before turning in the iPad and receiving a candy of their choice as a thank you. Results To get a better understanding of the data, I broke down my title question into many small questions alowing me to take multiple correlation of the mean answers to two certain sets of questions in the survey. However, the majority of the correlation numbers turned out to be insignificant and did not provide us with enough evidence to reject the null hypothesis and accept the alternative(my) hypothesis. I then categorized the individuals into social "junkies", "neutral users", & "non-junkies" as well as "good communicators", "neutral communicators", & "poor communicators" using the answers to particular set of questions that allowed me to measure social media usage and verbal communication skills. Conclusions/Discussion I took the correlation of the numbers of teens in each of the categories to determine an overall answer. The number was not significant enough to reject the null hypothesis and accept my hypothesis. This study and sample conclude that there is no relationship between the use of social media and communication skills in teens when talking to adults. Instead, these results suggest that possibly it is the adults that blame the innovation of technology and social media as a buffer for their mistake of not teaching the younger generation the proper verbal communication skills they expect them to have.

Competition history

• CSEF 2014 Behavioral & Social Sciences · Entry S0410

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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