Anel Jazybayeva, Assignment 3

Anel Jazybayeva, T00691233

VISA 1500

Assignment 3, part A

The development of humanity and technology provides to people more opportunities for entertainment and communication with each other from a great distance through Social Networking Sites (SNS). Nowadays, a huge number of variations of social networks have been invented, such as Facebook, Instagram Tik Tok, You Tube, Snapchat and other. They all have a different concept, purpose and audience. To criticize SNS that I engaged with the most, I decided to use the data for the three days period by using screen time analytics on my phone, which showed that my overall screen time in SNS is 7 hours 24 minutes. During this time I also tried to pay attention to my activity there, and which purposes I use them for. According to my screen time statistics, the most frequently used app is Tik Tok (4 hours 17 minutes).  I usually use this social media cite for entertainment and interpersonal communication purposes. I usually watch short videos and chatting with friends via Tik Tok messenger. Second SNS that I used a lot in past three days is You Tube (4 hours 2 minutes). I usually used it for consuming content created by other people, and also as a “background” during other household chores.  Instagram also took a lot of my time (2 hours 35 minutes). It was used to interact with friends, classmates and family members; watching other users’ content and create my own.

Like everything else in this world, SNS has its advantages and disadvantages. As I have mentioned before, social networking sites allow people to stay I touch while being far from each other. It can be applicable not only in interpersonal communication in daily life, but also in business and education system: “lecturers and students interact for educational purposes (the professionalisation experience), the introduction of digital technologies such as Facebook have also enabled socialisation experiences to occur between the lecturers and students to ensure effective teaching and learning.” (Sokhulu, 2020).  Another positive aspect of using digital technologies in cultural communication is opportunity to an opportunity to express yourself and develop your own horizons by observing people on the Internet. “Social networking sites are considered as a tool to reduce stress in today’s busy and competitive environment by means of free expression of thoughts” (Deepa, 2012, p. 8).  However, despite of  the all good aspects of using SNS, the main drawback of it is that people started spending more time on the Internet, as a result of which their concentration on more important aspects of life decreased. “In some cases, less importance is placed on remembering figures and facts and too much attention is devoted to connections shared by learners.” (Šárka Hošková-Mayerová and Zdena Rosická, 2015).

If we will compare two groups of SNS: entertainment and interpersonal communication, we will see that they do not differ much from each other. I think so because when a person creates content for the viewer, he receives a kind of feedback from the viewer, which leads to communication between the content creator and the viewer.