Internet: The Newest Mass Medium Essay

Advances in the internet have changed the way America works,learns,and communicates. The internet has become an integral part of our social life. This has assisted us by communicating and research purposes.

Social media data provide real-time updates on users. Both the population and individual-level scale of these data creates the opportunity to study census that is difficult to assess through traditional means of data collection. And, compared to surveys and other traditional means of data collection, these data are low cost and the process of data collection can be automated. However, there are some limitations regarding the use of these data. For example, similar to traditional data streams, social media data are not always representative of the population of interest. While researchers have proposed methods for minimizing this limitation such as probabilistically adjusting the data to match the population under study - identifying and quantifying Big Data bias is challenging. This is partly due to a lack of demographic indicators such as age, race, and gender. The ability to accurately and reliably detect users’ demographic traits would expand the use of social media as a research tool for social and behavioral sciences and public health. Additionally, linking demographic information to social media data would allow researchers to study disparities and trends in health-related attitudes and

“Across the low-income group (<$30,000) of all ethnic groups (whites, African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians), Hispanics have been found to be the most underserved population in terms of access to the Internet” (Peña-Purcell, 2008, p. 102). Thereby hindering their ability to gain access to and use internet health information.

In fact, according to Alex York in his article written for the website, Sprout Social, Social Media Demographics to Inform a Better Segmentation Strategy, “76% of adults use Facebook daily. 51% of adults use Instagram daily. 42% of adults use Twitter daily” (York). Everytime we log onto social media we are bombarded with many different view points on a variety of topics. Social media is constantly telling us how we should look, how we should eat, how our relationships should be, and much more.

Of the students analyzed within Hargittai’s (2010) research, they were characterized based on race, gender, ethnicity and so on—variables that have little to do with a person’s understanding for the Internet. The purpose was to understand how different types of people incorporate the Internet into their lives, and then compare these results with the number of laptops, number of access locations, and the differences in how these groups use the web. However, this combination of variables measured by Hargittai is not logical for the question at hand. Wouldn’t it be just as important to understand how many desktop computers these individual students owned, as well? Perhaps some students prefer a desktop computer to that of a laptop. Isn’t it also more likely that a student who enjoys the Internet, or the use of a computer, would try to get his or her hands on a laptop versus a student who does not enjoy the computer or the Internet?

The largest percentage increase in Internet use since 2005 has been in the 70-to-75 age group, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project. The survey found that 45 percent of that age bracket is online, compared with 26 percent in 2005. Researching health information is the third most popular online activity with the most senior age group, after email and online search.

The typical Latin American Internet user is a 26-year-old, middle-class man who has used the Internet for less than a year and whose favorite site for doing Web searches is Yahoo. At least, that is the conclusion of a study conducted by the advertising agency Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi Inc. The age of the average user shows that more young people are getting online in the region, since the average age in 1997 was 31 years old.

Parham (2004) examined that many people turn to the internet to connect socially, politically, and culturally.

The following table clearly identifies different populations in the world and their respective and projected Internet use:

Since its introduction on a public scale in the 1990s, the internet has been associated with many changes in social experience. Many aspects of social life such as education, work, commerce and even personal relationships have changed through the internet. However, researchers have found that, at least in the early years, access to the internet is shaped according to gender, class, ethnicity and education. During the 1990s the typical information technology user was a white, male, professional with a background in IT. This bias in internet access was named the ‘digital divide’ to point out the implied social inequalities. It was said that the internet was

According to Kadie Regan of SocialMediaToday, Global Active Internet Users now totals near 3.175 Billion people. That is nearly half of the world’s population (7.357 Billion) on the internet (Kadie, 2015). As for Social Media, over 2.206 Billion of those active users are using some sort of social media. There are 3.734 Billion Unique Mobile Users. Of those 3.734 Billion, 1.925 Billion use their mobiles phones for Social

Older individuals of Asian ethnicity are 1.79 times more likely to be using the internet (Green p 7.)

The population of the United Kingdom is 64.1 million, with 89% of UK residents being active Internet users. The total number of social media users is 38 million, with 50% of the entire population access social media platforms via mobile phones. Furthermore, there has been a 4% growth in the number of active Internet users and a 6% growth in the number of active social media users. In addition, the number of users who access social media platforms via their mobile devices has increased by 7% (Think Digital First, 2016).

The use of SNSs (social network sites) can have both positive and negative effects on the individual; however, few studies identify the types of people who frequent these Internet sites

On the other hand, the average age of Internet users in America is 42, while the average age for a non-frequent Internet user is 56 (European Travel Comission, 2012). In 2012, United States was ranked 28 of 211 in terms of Internet use in percentage of population, with 81 percent of its total population who are online (International Telecommunications Union, 2013).