Why the use of MySpace and Facebook

Michelle Gutierrez
Professor Yerks
Comp 106
30 October 2008
Why the use of MySpace and Facebook
Technology plays a big role in our everyday lives now a day’s especially with high school and college students. The article I read MySpace and Facebook: applying the uses and gratification Theory to exploring friend-Networking sites was mainly exploring the use of these types of site. They wanted to investigate why teenagers loved these sorts of communications. They recruited college students and gave them questioners, basically asking them questions about their accounts. They also asked another group of students who did not have such accounts why they didn’t show any interest in them.
The actual users said that people who did not have accounts did not have any friends and probably did not want to keep in touch with anyone. The non account holders said that they did not feel the need to open an account there was no one pressuring them. In my opinion some people that do have accounts just like the attention because there a lot of girls and guys who post half nude pictures and talk about very personal things. It is just there need for attention, not all of the account holders do this like the article says some account holders just have the accounts to engage in online communication, maintain connection with family, friends and coworkers.
I personally don’t have a MySpace or a Facebook and I have many high school friends and people that I hang out with every weekend. In fact a lot of my friends have these types of accounts and sometimes encourage me to create one but I have never felt the need to actually do it. I can still keep my friends and talk to all of the people that I want to talk to without having to stare at a picture of them on the computer screen. Like they said in the article the actual account holders spend on average three hours online looking at their accounts or someone else’s.To me personally that is a waste of time if you spend three hours every day on your account that is 21 hours out of every week that you are wasting just staring at pictures.
Even though, many people that do not have accounts say that they do not have many friends, I do not think that is an excuse for not having an account, even if you did have many friends you don’t need to be part of its users to be normal or to be accepted by others. I don’t judge those who do have these accounts because I think it is everyone’s choice to have one or not. What I don’t think is fair is that those who do not hold accounts are judged as not having any friends or being outcasts because that is not always the case. That is why I don’t have an account because I like to use myself as an example for those who say that non account holders have no friends.

1000 Word research Essay

Michelle Gutierrez
Professor Yerks
Comp 106
30 October 2008
What plays a bigger role in identity formations, family members, and influence from peers, personal ambitions or your significant other? Where do all of the other factors stand, what kind of influences do they have?
There are factors that influence all of our identity formations and some factors might begin influencing us since we are young in order to more efficiently mold us. Although some of our identities do not necessarily begin to form when we are young. It is easier to adjust a child to your ideas and beliefs, you could have been brought up one way and as you get older you start having different ideas that can change and reshape your opinions. It all depends on the person and how easily they are influenced and persuaded or how strongly they have been molded since they were young.
Like stated by David G. Myers in his book Social Psychology “persuasion studies demonstrate that the major influence on us is not the media but our contact with people”, this suggests that our identity formations are influenced by others. This does not mean that we are easily influenced by anyone who tries to make us reconsider our current thoughts. Among the primary the primary ingredients of persuasion are the communicator, the message, how the message is communicated and the audience (Myers2008). Meaning that there is a process through which a person is actually persuaded and convinced is not that simple, the source has to be reliable and dependable.
Parents are the most important socialization agents, meaning that they are the most influential in our lives, if we are raised with our parents’ influence we are most like to form an identity that resembles their thoughts and ideas and views on life and society. A study was done on the children of 1000 families to examine the associations between family environments and the academic achievement and school related attitude (Marjoribanks 1985). This study is an example of just how much influence parents have on children and this influence goes on through much of their lives. It is through this influence that we form our identity as people.
The study measured how much parents and teachers could influence the achievement of the students by showing support; if they showed a lot of support the children would do well in school and meet high expectations. Although this study suggests that the level of influence is different in male and female students. For the female students great achievement and occupational goals were mainly due to the support and encouragement from parents and what their ideal occupational goals were for their daughter, teachers and peers. For male students their achievement was high but their occupational goals were much more complex, also influenced by the same factors but were not specifically narrowed down to what the actual parent wanted like did the female students (Marjoribanks 1985).
There was another study done that tested if children followed their parents’ behavior because they agreed and went along with parent ideals because they saw them as authority figures, and how much rules and punishment influenced behavior. They took a lot of school children from different economic classes and gave them different scenarios and asked what decisions they would make and how their parents would react and how many times they would listen to what their parents tell them. The results suggested that there individual differences in adolescents’ beliefs about parental authority, and also in their obligation to obey parents, is an important predictors of one marker of adolescent socialization (Darling et al 2006). This study once again reaffirms the fact that parents are the strongest influences in identity formations even though sometimes this influence is reinforced with rules and punishment.
Of course, other factors influence our behavior but those depend on the importance that they have in our lives and how much we appreciate them. For example, our significant other if we are with someone who we don’t plan on being with for the rest of our lives then we probably won’t give them much validation, what they say will not influence who we are. On the other hand if our significant other is someone extremely important and their views and ideas contradict those of our parents I believe as humans we tend to rebel against our parents, some are willing to give it all up for their significant other. Something similar happens with peers but in a different way, they influence us in way that validates what our parents have taught us or sway us in a different direction trying to make it seem like their doing what is best for us.
I think that ambitions have different levels and depending on which level you are on is going to determine how you form your identity. There are some people who become obsessed with something that they become distant from their family and friends some ambitions whether they are with money or work have even broken up marriages. If it is not a serious ambition I think it is predetermined to turn into one and that’s where the problem begins. Striving for greatness is not a bad thing in life but when you become obsessed you can’t see past you obsession and that is when your identity takes a big shift.
All factors mentioned throughout the paper influence everyone in forming their identities it all depends on which one is most important to you. What the studies have shown is that the greatest influential factor is our parents for the simple fact that they are with all of us since we are young and help us rank our ideals in order of importance. The other factors are secondary because they come in into our live later on when we get older. They come in at school, work and many different places depending how much importance they come to have in our lives is when our original ideals are shifted and a couple of times they might contradict with those of our parents.








Bibliography
1. Myers, David G. Social Psychology. New York: McGraw Hill, 2008.
2. Marjoribanks, Kevin. “Ecological correlates of adolescents' aspirations: Gender-related differences.” Contemporary Educational Psychology 10 (1985) 329-341.
3. Darking, Nancy et al. “Adolescents’ as active agents in the socialization process: Legitimacy of parental authority and obligation to obey as predictors of obedience”. Journal of Adolecense 30 (2007) 297-311