Social Media Impact On Young People: How Do You Feel Without Your Keyboard?

Hi, I am Idil Iclal Bagdu. I am 16 years old and I am a 10th grade student. I want to tell you the story of my project. Until a year ago, I had a difficult time with making friends. I spent most of my time at home with my phone and computer. However, during the second half of last school year, I had very nice friendships with the new students coming to our class and I realised that the people around me had reduced my time on the phone and on the computer while making me more social, more communicative. Then I realised that most of my friends around me prefer to spend time on the internet rather than face-to-face.

I focused my project on my environment, on the rapidly developing technology and on the impact on the socialisation caused by our  technological era. The rapid increase in internet usage and the increase in the number of the internet and gaming addicts has caused many of us to realise this problem, and this has led me to design this project. I would like to point out that my friends who are addicted to games also have an important place in the project. I thought that I could do something about this issue when my peers, who have problems socialising, are usually addicted to games and I realise that this situation gradually deteriorates their lives.

Especially in this age range (13-17), I think that the difficulties in socialising will weaken the individual in the future, and weaken their relationship with other individuals. If we think that people are social beings, we can say that each of us needs each other, we need to communicate, share and make ourselves a social entity.
Technology can accelerate communication and as it accelerates communication it can have a negative impact on our socialisation processes. Of course, online games are not the only factor to negatively affect socialisation but, considering this age range and today’s technology, we can say that online gaming addiction has a large share of the blame. Based on the above, and since I need to complete a term project for my school this year, I thought I should do a study on this subject and I started to do research with the help of my guidance teacher. In this study, I planned to research the effects of game addiction in teens aged 13-17, by taking into account the negative and positive factors affecting the socialisation process.
The hypothesis of my study was that when making classroom planning, students who are game addicts and have a lack of communication skills should be seated with those who use the internet for other purposes, and who also have developed communication skills. This could then gradually result in a positive change for game addicts from a socialisation point of view, thereby improving their communication skills.
In my study, adolescents spent time on computer games for a long time, preferring computer games to social events, wanting to leave social activity groups and lying about computer use and duration, having anger management problems when not playing a computer game and feeling depressive. These are common traits of game addicts.
As a result of my research, I tried to determine the effects of online games in a certain age range and to offer suggestions for improved behaviour. My recommendation was to include addicted students in the same class with students who are not addicted. After a set period of time, we carried out individual interviews and measured participants on a game addiction scale, in order to better understand the socialisation processes of the students. The change in behaviour we measured reflected our expectations. The preparation process for the project was really tiring for me, but I can say that it was fun.
Therefore, when writing the conclusion section, my stress was reduced, and when the project was completely over, I started to apply and wait for the result. Even though I received a good score when the results were explained, I was not able to take part in the regional exhibition because my score was still below average. This made me a bit sad but, a week ago, I received a mail which lifted my spirits again, so much so I am now writing this story.

I hope you like the subject and the story of my project. If there is someone who is addicted to online games around you or you struggle to socialise, you could benefit from my project. I think everyone is likely to have such an acquaintance because of the technology of our time. I think that this project is suitable for today’s technology and its problems, as it leads to a decrease in socialising and communication skills.