Year 1-C, Research education Group 2 An Investigation into Facebook addiction and its toll on RI year-ones

 Introduction to research  Our Methodologies  Findings and analysis  Conclusions and advise for future research

Why did we choose this topic? We hypothesized that Year1 RI students’ lives were being negatively impacted by Facebook. Thus we investigated how so, and found out more about Facebook addiction.

Our research centered on identifying causes for Facebook addiction, understanding its causes and effects, and finding solutions to curb Facebook addiction. The “Methodologies” section identifies how this was done. “Results and analysis section reports our inferences and understandings. Finally we conclude the presentation with some advise on future research on similar fields.

 We started off with some background research, to familiarize us with the depth of such a situation.  Then we did a social survey of Year 1 RI students on how Facebook was affecting their lives  And lastly we interviewed Head of CLE department Mrs. Jacqueline Chua on her views on Facebook.

During our research, we found out that in the global masses, a game known as “Farmville” was majorly the cause of addiction. Other games on Facebook were also said to have been causes of addiction Other than that, there were still some who were addicted to it because of the chatting and file-sharing convenience it offered.

 We conducted our survey in school at around mid-March. Present surveyors were Hamilton, Jerome and Mahin.  The surveyed were Year-1 students taken in randomly in no particular order.  Their demographics were common: age 12-15, students of RI, and all had home IT facilities and access.

 First and foremost, everyone had a Facebook account.  A huge proportion had been spending more than 3 hours on a daily basis…..that is 25% of them!  However, 55% limited their Facebook usage to an hour a day. Only 10% had been on Facebook after late night.

 Our Interviewee whom we made an appointment with was Mrs. Jacqueline Chua, head of Character Education. We roughly estimate her age to be somewhere in or close to the 30 to 40 range.*  We met her for our interview in late March. Another Research Education group was interviewing her as well but there was no interference from them. Present Interviewers were Jerome, Mahin and Hamilton  That is merely a rough, unsupported estimation. We do not claim that it is true or relevant in anyway. Age may differ in whatever scale from given demographics due to our applicants refusal for statement.

 We interviewed her with regards to how she felt RI students were doing with Facebook as part of their lives.  One of the things she stated was that Facebook addiction’s effects was the same with any addiction. She said that Facebook addiction was among the many facets of Internet Addiction.  She also said that games are as much as addictive as social networking on Facebook could be, and the only way to curb addiction is to go cold turkey, and that willpower alone made it possible

 We all have gone through several major parts of the Research Education Module, starting with our Preliminary Ideas and our Group Project Proposals.  We have aimed to find out about Facebook addiction, its manifestation and ultimately how to curb it. However there were major learning points, both in research methodologies, and within the information we found.

 From our survey, we found out that Facebook was not treated as a gaming and entertainment site within RI. Most still used Facebook as a social network.  While a small portion of RI’s year 1 Facebook community are addicted to Facebook, it would turn out that willpower is addictions only curing

 Some portions of our research were single- sided, for instance, we could have applied the methods to internet addiction. There could have been other social networks which we could have investigated.  For our survey, students of a wider span of demographics could have been used for more enriching research.

THE END………..or is it? Year 1-C Research Education Group 2 Mahin Hossain, Jerome Boon, James Kartadinata, Hamilton Siak, Darren Gooi (leader)