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The Internet is an extremely prevalent necessity to us today, and indeed Social Media has an extensive and far-reaching influence on youths, especially in the social aspect: 1. Though youths can acquire an increased awareness of current social affairs through articles shared on websites like Facebook, social media comprises of entertainment content which is more appealing and causes users to diverge easily. 2. Social media is very broad and generic, and may even preoccupy youths so much that they become uninterested in / have no time for reading current social affairs online. Question: How do we exploit social media to increase the awareness of social issues among youths, and at the same time lessen the aforementioned disadvantages?
Figure 1: A YouTube playlist showcasing popular content viewed by Singaporeans- largely entertainment-based
Figure 3: Pie-chart comparing the time spent on the various areas of content among most Facebook users
Figure 3 demonstrates how for most people, at least 55% of the time spent on Facebook is for entertainment. Social media websites have a wide array of entertainment content which many youths enjoy perusing- leading to the neglect of important subjects like social issues. 2) BROADNESS OF SOCIAL MEDIA
Figure 4: According to Figure 4, Singaporeans spend on average 2.2 hours per day on social media websites
Figure 5: Most youths read content on social media- but what content do they actually read? Refer to Figure 3.
Figures 4 and 5 show how a youth can do so many things on social media- which ultimately leads to more time spent online. Sometimes, they may even become addicted to surfing social media websites, resulting in little time to become engaged with social issues online.
Through this platform, the influence of social media is expanded to increase the awareness of the social issues amongst youths. Also, it will help to diminish the disadvantages of contemporary social media platforms: (1) by helping to prevent youths from digressing into entertainment content while being engaged in social issues online; (2) by providing a single platform with a specific function so the users time will not be diluted amongst other things to do; (3) by allowing many different youths to express their opinions on social issues with the same leverage as everyone else, encouraging many perspectives to be considered. As a further measure, this platform can be reproduced and adapted to function for the working adult and growing elderly population. This will create a repository of the many perspectives of different age groups of the public which can be studied in the future to create better governing policies.
Section D: Bibliography
1
Amy Porterfield, Study Highlights Growing Social Media Addiction: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/study-highlights-growing-social-media-addiction/ 2 We Are Social, 2014 Asia Pacific Digital Overview: http://wearesocial.sg/blog/2014/01/social-digital-mobileapac-2014/ 3 Fann Sim, S'pore youths spending more time online: study: http://sg.news.yahoo.com/s-pore-youths-spendingmore-time-online--study-100333925.html