Blog #2

I decided to focus my blog on an article titled “The Relationship Between Facebook and the Well-Being of Undergraduate College Students.” This article caught my interest because primarily a lot of us are on Facebook, which is a social networking site that allows us to be tied to our friends and receive constant update with our friends lives, and obviously all of us that are in this class are in college. Within our class, there are a mix of first time college students and upper-class students as well so I felt that this article was right up our alley and that we would be able to relate to it. According to the article, first year college students that have a high number of Facebook friends tend to not adjust emotionally as well in their first year of college than students with a lower number of Facebook friends.  The research found that “first year students seek out friends on Facebook as a coping strategy to relieve the stress of college adjustment” and it suggests that they may not as willingly socialize with students at their new school or form emotional ties to their college (Kalpidou, Costin, & Morris, 2011). The results showed a negative correlation between first year college students and Facebook.

However, upper-class students showed a positive correlation. The article found that upper-class students that have a lot of Facebook friends meant that those students have a positive social adjustment and an attachment to their institution. What the article defined as social adjustment is “having a feeling of fitting in with the college community” (Kalpidou, Costin, & Morris, 2011). How this was determined was by having students fill out a questionnaire and one of the questions was “I feel that I fit in well as part of the college environment” (Kalpidou, Costin, & Morris, 2011). The 35 upper-class college students that were surveyed felt they fit in more with their college lifestyle than the 35 first year college students that were also surveyed.

According to our in class lecture, we learned that “the average person spends 2 hours per day online and that Social Networking Sites account for 11% of all time spent online.” After reading the article, it is interesting to see how a communication technology, Facebook, impacts how students interact in their college community especially since a social networking site is the most common website for internet use at this time. First year students rely on their Facebook friends as a coping mechanism with their new college environment, and upper-class students rely on Facebook to remain attached to their institution. It would be interesting to perform another research study like this in another few years and see at that time how a social networking cite can impact a student’s adjustment and attachment to their school.

Kalpidou, M., Costin, D., & Morris, J. (2011). The Relationship Between Facebook and the Well-Being of     Undergraduate College Students. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 14 (4), Retrieved from http://uq5sd9vt7m.search.serialssolutions.com.libweb.lib.utsa.edu/directLink?&atitle=The%20relationship%20between%20Facebook%20and%20the%20well-being%20of%20undergraduate%20college%20students.&author=Kalpidou,%20Maria;Costin,%20Dan;Morris,%20Jessica&issn=2152-2715&title=Cyberpsychology,%20Behavior,%20and%20Social%20Networking&volume=14&issue=4&date=2011-04-01&spage=183&id=doi:10.1089/cyber.2010.0061&sid=ProQ_ss&genre=article