THE INFLUENCES OF FACEBOOK ON VIETNAMESE TEENAGES

Life is becoming more and more modern. The development of technology inventing helps people a lot in their work and study. Furthermore, it gives people many kinds of means for relax and entertain.

International Bachelor Degree Program, Faculty of International Education

-o0o -Research Project

THE INFLUENCES OF FACEBOOK ON

VIETNAMESE TEENAGES

Group: 2

Members: Nguyễn Hà Mai Hương

Trần Thị Phương Linh

Lương Phương Thảo

Huỳnh Thế Lợi

Teacher: Ms PHẠM PHƯƠNG LAN

Hà Nội -2010

I Introduction 3

II Major findings7

1 Using Facebook among Vietnamese teenagers 7

a.Their time spent on surfi ng Facebook 7

b The most often activities Vietnamese teenagers do when using Facebook 8

2 The influences of Facebook on Vietnamese teenagers 9

a The good influences: 9

b The bad influences: 11

III Conclusion 12 1.Exclusive summary……….12

2 Suggestion 12

IV APPENDIX 14 1 Questionaire……… 14

2 Charts………17

V.BIBLIOGRAPHY………19

I Introduction

1 Background :

Life is becoming more and more modern The development of technology inventing helps people

a lot in their work and study Furthermore, it gives people many kinds of means for relax and entertain In recent years, a trend of using social network is booming among teenagers and the most famous is Facebook Facebook is a social networking website launched in February 2004 and operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc It has many functions such as playing games, chatting, sharing pictures or websites and so on As a result, many teenagers in the world are being attracted by Facebook According to 2009, Dan Tri, the number of Vietnamese teenagers who use Facebook is approximately 400,000 accounts – about 2/1000 Facebook users all over the world On the other hand, some people do not want this social network become more popular, especially, the government because they believed that Facebook would be the best method to hand bad information Therefore, using Facebook has some advantages and also disadvantages In this research, we are going to study about the influences of Facebook on teenagers who have cognitive, emotional and attitudinal changes

2 Rationale of the study:

The information technology is developing faster and faster Many people use private blog to share their emotion and to contact with their friend Facebook is one of the famous private blog

in the world Facebook has been popular all over the world for a long time but in Viet Nam, it has been popular with Vietnamese teenagers for 2 years after 360blog closed It became a wave

in short time It is believed quite useful and simple to use Many people think that Facebook is one the part of their life, so we want to find down: “what is really situation in Vietnam? How many time people use Facebook per day? Do they really like it? “Through people who use Facebook, we want to find the advantage and disadvantage of Facebook And what is influence

of Facebook to people, special young people With the questionnaire and discussing, we hope that we can give you some suggestion to use Facebook easier

3 Research questions:

 How is the state of using Facebook among Vietnamese teenagers

 What are the influences of Facebook on teenagers? ( Advantage and Disadvantage)

 What are solutions to make Vietnamese teenagers use Facebook effetely?

4 Research methods:

According to the research questions, firstly, we designed the questionnaire with purposes study about the state of using Facebook among Vietnamese teenagers, the advantages as well as the disadvantages of Facebook on Vietnamese teenagers by multiple-choice questions and opening questions Then, the questionnaires were distributes to 55 students from National Economics University and some other teenagers, but we just got back 44 ones After that, we totalized and analyzed the figures to get primary data Beside the primary date, we also used secondary date (TV, newspapers, ) to collect information Finally, we wrote report based on the figures we obtained

5 Literature review:

Facebook “Improves social skills”

According to the research of the Cambridge University, Facebook can encourage users to be more social instead of less social

Researchers found out that Facebook gave people more choice to contact with their relationships and was “a way of storing biography and enhancing social memory” They can track people who they like or find out what ex-partners were up to

Users also used it to keep in touch with old friends who they might lose contact with They can

do that by logging on to Facebook to take information from profiles and pictures That way is easier than a phone call or letter

As a result, people can associate at a fundamental level, meaning former relationships and associations can be revived

(Source:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/cambridgeshire/7689077.stm)

Slander and revilement another on Facebook

Nowadays, Facebook becomes more and more popular with many young people in Viet Nam Facebook also brings to us many negative and benefit Some people said: If they could not log in Facebook every day, they feel uncomfortable and they love Facebook so much It is the place which they share their feeling Some people use this to slander or revile another people In the real life, they are quite silent and mild but on Facebook they show another character They slander, revile, and even curse other people Because they use “tag”, so many people know the note immediately Of course, who was slandered, know the note The argument was started One Facebook, many people fake someone else They fake the famous person, or someone they hate They make them like the really Facebook of person whom they fake by posting pictures, writing note…… and after that, they sully another person and make them feel angry with person who was faked Many bad situations happened The victim uses many ways to find down who is the instigator This brings many troubles for the victim and the instigator Maybe because of this joke, friends can change to enemy

(Source:http://vietnamnet.vn)

Two risks of facebook

Facebook, which is used in all over the world, has a lot of gaps that almost people don’t care

The report of International Christian Chamber of Commerce (ICCC) said that many people

were victims (include teenager) swindled on the internet and total costs of their losses come to

$559 million in 2009, increased to 110% from the last year In April 2010, the defense’s experts

of VeriSign Company said that a hacker American, who had ever appropriated 1, 5 million accounts in Facebook successfully, had bought username and password in some forums with the cost from 25 to 45 USD per account To solve this problem experts show us two risks warning about the insaneness of Facebook First, Private information is exploited as much as possible Recently, Facebook provides a new application whose name is Open Graph, makes private information share faster and variedly That is an action of company tending to advertisers helps them to find a lot of information about enjoyment, private problems that are being argued and so

on However, that is way for hacker who can break into everyone’s account easily Second,

Facebook is set up privacy in unsafe condition when it is redesigned Every year, Facebook

usually changes, upgrades some interfaces and features of website at least 2-3 times At that time, Facebook moves user’s established privacy to default format automatically, it means that all private information is appeared

(Source: www.vnexpress.net)

Facebook takes the most influences on teengirls

According to 2010, Bingo –a writer on BBC, instead of TV and magazine, Facebook has the strongest influences on teengirls now Their life is being affected by one of the biggest social networks in the world When they were asked for three things important in life, 60% of teengirls under 15 years old said that: family, friends and Facebook Even more than 41% of teengirls consider that Facebook is more important than family and friends However, there are only 6%

of teenboys agree with it This research shows the important of Facebook on teenagers, especially on teengirls Some parents were surprised by this figure because they do not believe that technologies can intervene in life of young people like this It is obvious that Facebook has many good effects on people in general and on teenagers in particular It makes people relax and feel comfortable by sharing their emotional that they cannot tell their parents or anyone else In addition, they can make friends and widen their knowledge about the world However, from this research there are a large number of teengirls think the role of Facebook is equal to their family and friends Therefore, in this case teenagers spend their time in “virtual life” more than real life; the problem for parents deal with is catching up the trend of their daughter and should spend more time for them

(Source: BBC news channel)

II Major findings

1 Using Facebook among Vietnamese teenagers

First of all, this research will get information from teenagers such as things they do when they use Facebook and the amount of time they spend on surfing Facebook

a Their time spent on surfing Facebook.

As the development of communication medium, teenagers get many great opportunities to make friends, find information, play games, and listen to music and so on In recent years, a trend of using social network is booming among Vietnamese teenagers and the most famous is Facebook According to my survey which conducted among students from National Economics University and some other teenagers that I met on the streets, about 57% of them said that they will not survive without Facebook, 32% thought Facebook is quite important but it have the same role as

TV and Internet and the rest 11% do not really care about it In the fact, we do not suspect the role of Facebook among teenagers as it has many function better than other social network However, this number about the proportion of teenagers love Facebook is quite surprising On the other hand, we can see clearly the influence of Facebook throughout the next figure Being asked how many times they spend on Facebook each day approximately 59% of the respondents answered that they spend from 1-3 hours per day, 27% spend above 3 hours per day and the rest 14% spend per day It means that the influences of Facebook on teenagers are not small and unavoidable We can see the percentage clearer from the chart below:

b The most often activities Vietnamese teenagers do when using Facebook.

The booming of Facebook among Vietnamese teenagers is become more and more popular Facebook surpasses its competitors in its functions It not only a social network which used to connect people around the world, Facebook also help people get information and entertainment such as listening to music, playing games and so on Being asked what they usually do on Facebook, about 32% of teenagers mostly playing games, 20% use Facebook to write entry, 9% love chatting with friends and 16% prefer sharing pictures However, there are 23% of them choose “Others” because they go Facebook as a habit and almost do not do anything These figures indicate that Vietnamese teenager do not take the benefit of useful functions on

Facebook There are a large number of them only use Facebook to play games and waste their time on Facebook with no intention

From the facts above, we can see some problems in the way Vietnamese teenagers spend their time as well as the activities they usually do on Facebook In the next point, we will indicate how Facebook affect teenagers

2 The influences of Facebook on Vietnamese teenagers

As we known, everything has two sides and Facebook is no exception Nowadays, Facebook is very popular with teenagers in general and Vietnamese teenagers in particular, but it has some the advantages as well as the disadvantages

a The good influences:

Firstly, we would like to talk about the advantages of Facebook Facebook has quite many advantages According to the results we obtained, answer which is chosen most is “keeping yourself updated with friends’ news” (23.9%).As we know, Facebook has three main action tasks which are enjoyed most by users, they are: “watching pictures and writing comments”,

“visiting their friends’ profiles” and “ uploading pictures, videos and music” Users can log

on Facebook to look at pictures, profiles, news and information… about their friends; write

they often keep in touch (22.3%) with old school friends who they might otherwise lose contact with, or family members when they live far from their house by the utilities of facebook.13.6% of the answerers chosen one of the advantages of Facebook is “relaxing after the hard working” After the hard working, they can relax, have fun by watching pictures; writing comments on them; playing games on Facebook which are plentiful and diversified; doing the quiz which are interesting It is useful solution to rid of stress Other advantages

of Facebook is “shopping online” (9.2%) With popularity of Facebook and the advantages of shopping online, the development of shops via Facebook is understandable For buyers, they can buy many things from shop online with the cost cheaper than usual shops and for sellers; their shops can be developed faster and faster by relationships on Facebook Facebook is a social network that connects people with friends and others, who work, study and live around them, so users can make new friends easily, it is one of the advantages of Facbook (8.2%) They maybe discover some hobbies in common through comments, notes, stories, pictures, chats, ect Because of all above advantages, Facebook is a useful social network for

teenagers

many advantages However it also has disadvantages.

The first disadvantage is that Facebook make teenagers waste time, Facebook , with its

fascinating power make , teenagers sink into oblivion They are so keen on using Facebook that they neglect their school activities Food is left uneaten, homework and lessons in prepared without the distraction of using Facebook , teenagers may spend their time for their friends and family in the real world According to the chart, 34,1% of teenagers who were asked agreed with this disadvantage The second disadvantage is that teenagers receive a lot of spam and unwanted information from strangers which make them uncomfortable and annoyed It is the main reason why they do not like using Facebook the chart shows that 40,9% teenagers who were asked regarded it as their main problem

Another disadvantage is that using Facebook too much makes people less active the act of using Facebook requires almost no activity on the part of user All the time they spend in front of screen is the time they are net moving round or playing a sport As you can see from the chart 25% of teenagers have chosen this disadvantage as their main problem In conclusion, the evil influence of Facebook on teenagers is inevitable In my view, Facebook is only useful when we know how to use it