COMMUNICATING THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA: STUDENTS EXPERIENCES - Essay Example

on communication between students, and establish a number of key aspects such as the main reason as to why they choose to use social media, which social media platform that these students happen to use the most, for how long they have been using the social media, their preferred social media sites and for how long they have been using these sites. The new developments that have been made in the technological world are seen to have caused the internet to become an innovating avenue via which families and individuals are now able to communicate in an easier manner.

The development of social media networks has in recent times been credited with the creation of a new phenomenon on the internet that is seen to have quickly been growing to gain massive popularity over the course of the last decade (Sponcil and Gitimu 2013). Some of the more popular social media sites that are seen to have emerged during this period are seen to include, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Students and other persons using these social media sites are able to create online personal profiles that allow them to be able to easily connect with other users on these sites and engage in Activities such as positing what they happen to be doing at a particular time, upload photos, send both public and personal messages as well as use their profiles to try and find attachments and jobs.

Research conducted by Lenhart, Purcell, Smith, and Zickuhr (2010), on a sample size of 800 adolescents aged between 12 and 17 years and 2,253 adults aged 18 years and over, was instrumental in establishing that an approximated 72% of all college students happen to have created various social media profiles with about 45% of the college students in the study reporting that they regularly use a social media site at least once a day for reasons such as communicating with both family and friends and interacting with strangers as social media sites essentially aid in the provision of a non-personal means via which students