Municipal educational institution

“Tarusa secondary school №1

 named after M.G. Efremov”

Social Networks at School

Dunya Okhotina

9 “A” Class

Directed by

D.V. Chaptykov,

Social studies teacher,

S.B. Zhivokina,

English teacher,

T.V. Potemkina,

English teacher,

Tarusa, 2017

Outline

1. Introduction……………………………………………………3
2. Social networks…………………………………..……………4

1. VK
2. Facebook
3. OK
4. Twitter
5. Tumblr
6. Instagram
7. Periscope
8. Pinterest
9. Snapchat
10. Ask.fm
11. Google+
12. Skype
13. Telegram
14. Viber
15. WhatsApp

3. Survey in school……………………………………………...11

1. Age and gender of schoolmates
2. Most popular social networks
3. Average number of networks by age and gender
4. Girls’ and boys’ networks
5. Average age of users in different networks

4. Comparison with other countries…………………………….15
5. Conclusion………………………………..……………….....16
6. Sources…………………………...……….….17

Goal: to study involvement in social networks among students of secondary school.

Task: to conduct a survey among students of secondary school about their  involvement in social networks and to compare our survey results with data from other countries.

Introduction

Social networking is a new tendency, which helps to unite people with same interests via the Internet. First social networks were created to unite people who had already known each other (classmates, neighbours, etc.). Nowadays it’s quite common to find friends in social networks, communication off-line often begins after communication on-line. Social networks are different in the way of exchanging information. In one social networks you send pictures or videos while in another you send long messages, music, films, etc. People often use several social networks. Some people use social networks mostly to communicate with their friends, while others use it to read or watch some sort of content. Some scientists say that social networks can badly influence people’s social development. On the other hand they can help to relieve loneliness and social isolation.

We want to analyze what social networks are most popular among teenagers. We will compare preferences of boys and girls and students of different ages (from 11 to 17 years old).

We will review the most popular social networks, their main features and then results of our survey.

Also we will show the results of survey about certain social network that was made this year.

Social networks

Vkontakte

VKontakte –– social network, created by Pavel Durov. It is the most popular social network in Russia. It was started on October 16, 2006. Now VK has more than 410 millions accounts. In VK there is a set of features typical for many social networks:

• Messaging. VK Private Messages can be exchanged between groups of 1 to 30 people. Each message may contain up to 10 attachments: photos, videos, audio files, maps and documents.
• News. VK users can post on their profile walls, each post may contain up to 10 attachments – media files, maps and documents (see above). The news feed can be switched between all news (default) and most popular news modes.
• Communities. VK features two types of communities: groups and public pages. The two types are largely interchangeable, the main difference being in the default settings.
• Like buttons. VK like buttons for posts, comments, media and external sites operate in a different way from Facebook.
• Privacy. Users can control the availability of their content within the network and on the Internet.
• Synchronization with other social networks allows any news published on the VK wall to appear on Facebook or Twitter.

Facebook

Facebook –– social network that was launched on February 4, 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook has more than 1.86 billion monthly active users as of December 31, 2016. Facebook users can create an account with photos and information about themselves, invite friends, message them, change status, leave messages on their or other’s wall, post photos and videos, create groups. User can control the information that he post in his profile and decide who’ll have access to one or another part of his page. Also people have an ability to leave a complaint about annoying users or block them. Facebook is very similar to VKontakte in its main features.

Odnoklassniki

Odnoklassniki –– social network developed by Albert Popkov and started on March 4, 2006. The website currently has more than 200 million registered users. This network was initially aimed to contact with classmates, but you can also find here relatives, old friends, colleagues, get to know someone, look over other user’s images, upload your own photos, basically you almost have the same features that on Facebook or Vkontakte.

Twitter

Twitter is an online news and social networking service where users post and interact with messages, "tweets," restricted to 140 symbols. Registered users can post tweets, but those who are unregistered can only read them. Instead of friends here are followers: one can follow other users but not necessarily be followed by them. Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey. It was launched in July 15, 2006 and in June of 2016 Twitter counted 313 million active users. Users can group different messages with one theme or type by using hashtags – keywords or phrases beginning with okotropa sign (#). Also, ‘d’ before the user’s name enables to send private message. And sign ‘@’ before the user’s name uses for remark to other users. Twitter often uses for transfer personal or public meaning news. Many public officials have twitter accounts, like former President of Russia Dmitri Medvedev, Kaluga governor Anatoly Artamonov. In United States President has official account (@POTUS — President Of The United States) that is transferred to the new president after elections (yes, they have new president every 4 years!).

Tumblr

Tumblr –– microblogging and social networking website founded by David Karp in February 19, 2007. At February 1, 2017, Tumblr hosts over 334.1 million blogs. It includes lot of photos, notes, videos and gif-images around different themes and enables to publish posts to their “tumbleblog”. User can follow other user’s blogs and after that their posts will be show up in their “dashboard”. Tumblr describe themselves like “The easiest way to blog”. Published content is divided into 7 categories: text posts, images, video, quotes, links, chats and audio. Also through dashboard users can mark liked notes and reblog to theirselves blog with ability to add  comment. Button “like” make user enable to let user’s followers and the post’s author know that he liked the post.

Instagram

Instagram –– an online mobile photo-sharing site that allows its users to share pictures and videos either publicly or privately on the app. Instagram was created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, and launched in October 26, 2010 as a free mobile app.

 Users can upload photographs and short videos directly from their phones, follow other users feeds and geotag images with longitude and latitude coordinates, or the name of a location. Every year, Instagram released Top 10 Instagram geotagged locations in the world, in pictures. Users can connect their Instagram account to other social networking sites, enabling them to share uploaded photos to those sites. As of June 2013, users can connect their Instagram accounts to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Flickr.

Periscope

Periscope –– live video streaming app developed by Kayvon Beykpour and Joe Bernstein and acquired by Twitter before launch in 2015. At 2017 there are more than 15 millions accounts in Periscope. Periscope users have the option to tweet out a link to their Live Stream. They can also choose whether or not to make their video public or viewable to only certain users. Periscope allows viewers to send "hearts" to the broadcaster by tapping on the mobile screen as a form of appreciation. Periscope is used by independent journalists to broadcast important events.

Pinterest

Pinterest –– web company that operates a photo sharing website. The site was founded by Ben Silbermann and now it has about 700 millions users. Users can upload, save, sort, and manage images — known as pins and other media content through collections known as pinboards. Users can then save individual pins to one of their own boards using the "Pin It" button, with pinboards typically organized by a central topic or theme. Users can personalize their experience by pinning items, creating boards, and interacting with other members. The end result is that the "pin feed" of each user displays unique, personalized results.

Snapchat

Snapchat –– image messaging and multimedia mobile application created by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown in September 2011. At 2016 year Snapchat has 110 millions users. Snapchat is primarily used for creating multimedia messages referred to as "snaps"; snaps can consist of a photo or a short video, and can be edited to include filters and effects, text captions, and drawings. Snaps can be directed privately to selected contacts, or to a semi-public "Story". The private message photo snaps can be viewed for a user-specified length of time (1 to 10 seconds as determined by the sender) before they become inaccessible."Stories" are viewed in chronological order, and each segment is accessible for 24 hours.

Ask.fm

Ask.fm –– social networking site where users create profiles and can send each other questions. The site was founded in Latvia and launched on June 16, 2010, as a rival to Formspring (another network created in 2009). Now it counts 160 million users.

Google+

Google+ –– interest-based social network that is owned and operated by Google. It has 111 million active users. A Google+ User profile is a public visible account of a user that is attached to many Google properties. It includes basic social networking services like a profile photo, about section, background photo, cover photo, previous work and school history, interests, places lived and an area to post status updates. Circles is a core feature of the Google+ Social Platform. It enables users to organize people into groups or lists for sharing across various Google products and services. Google+ has a "+1 button" to allow people to recommend sites and parts of sites, similar in use to Facebook's Like button.

Skype

Skype is an application that provides text, video and voice chats. Users may exchange such digital documents as images, text, video and any other, and may transmit both text and video messages. Skype allows registered users to communicate through both instant messaging and voice chat. Voice chat allows telephone calls between pairs of users and conference calling and uses a proprietary audio codec. At 2010 year Skype had 663 millions users.

Telegram

Telegram –– free instant messaging service. Users can send messages and exchange photos, videos, stickers and files of any type. Telegram also provides optional end-to-end-encrypted messaging.  In June 2015, Telegram launched a platform for third-party developers to create bots. They can respond to messages or mentions, can be invited into groups and can be integrated into other programs. Telegram has public channels that are often used by journalist and other public figures. Telegram was created by Pavel Durov in 2013 and now has more than 110 millions users.

Viber

Viber allows free instant messaging and phone calls. The actual functionality varies from platform to platform. Viber includes text, picture and video messaging across all platforms, with voice calling. Viber was developed by Viber Media. Viber Media was founded by former chief information officer in the Israeli army, Talmon Marco in December 2, 2010. It had about 600 millions users in December 2016

WhatsApp

WhatsApp Messenger –– freeware, cross-platform and end-to-end

encrypted instant messaging application for smartphones. It uses the Internet to make voice calls, one to one video calls; send text messages, documents, PDF files, images, GIF, videos, user location, audio files, phone contacts and voice notes to other users using standard cellular mobile numbers. In December 2016 WhatsApp step over the mark of 1 billion users.

Survey in School

We conducted our survey among students of 6th to 11th classes of our school. Survey was anonymous, questions included age, gender and list of social networks which student uses. List of networks included most popular networks in Russia in alphabetical order. Also two non-existent social networks were included (Coursee and Frontier) to check for validity of responses. Here is a sample questionnaire:

At all 242 questionnaires were filled. There were few questionnaires with missing age or gender, and very few (less than 10) with non-existent networks chosen. Other were correctly filled.

Age and gender of schoolmates

Distribution of age and gender is shown in following pie charts. Most of respondents were 12-17 years old, 54% of them were girls.

Most popular social networks

The most popular social network was VKontakte, almost all students use it (98%). Skype is next popular, although it is used mostly not as social network but as application for voice and video calls. The 5 most popular networks were: VKontakte, Skype, Google+, Instagram, Whatsapp. Indeed, we think that Google+ is not so popular in fact but was chosen because students use Google Search engine and Youtube that also is part of Google.

Average number of networks by age and gender

We also analyzed how many networks on average one student uses. This was different for girls and boys. Girls use on average 7.2 networks, while boys use 6.3 networks.

We also looked for average number of networks in different ages. On average younger children use more social networks (yellow line), owing to boys (blueline).

Girls’ and boys’ networks

We analyzed which networks were more popular among girls and boys. It appears that networks with more visual contents are more popular among girls: Pinterest, Tumblr, Snapchat, Instagram. There were no specifically boys’ networks.

Average age of users in different networks

We calculated average age of users in different networks. Not to mention non-existent networks the youngest network was Odnoklassniki and Snapchat, the oldest — Ask.Fm and Telegram.

Comparison with other countries

We compared our data with statistics in other countries which we managed to find in the Internet. It appears that in Europe and United States there is no such universal social network as VKontakte, teens use more different networks at the same time. Snapchat is quickly gaining popularity, while most popular Facebook is used by only 70-80% of teens.

Here is data for France:

And here is data for United States:

Survey about Snapchat

We wondered why results about Snapchat use are so different in USA and in Russia. We conducted a second survey where we asked people how do they use Snapchat or why don’t they use it. This survey was passed in Kaluga’s and our schools. This time we surveyed less people than last year. There were 40 people surveyed in two schools. Survey was conducted online.

Survey in Kaluga

We surveyed 40 students there. About 50% of students do not use Snapchat.
42.5% use Snapchat only as camera with effects.
Only 30% send photos made in Snapchat to their friends and 22.5% of them post those photos.

Just 20% follow people on Snapchat. 15% follow jut their friends.

And 45% of people use effects and masks in other social networks.

17.5% of people don’t use Snapchat because they think that masks are stupid.

Just 2.5% don’t use Snapchat because their friends don’t have it.

7.5% don’t use Snapchat because they don’t understand how it works.

45% of students don’t use Snapchat because they see no reason to.

And 10% don’t use Snapchat because they don’t know what is it.

Survey in our school

We surveyed 40 students here. About 35% of students do not use Snapchat.
47.5% use Snapchat only as camera with effects.
42.5% send photos made in Snapchat to their friends and 22.5% of them post those photos. 12.5% of people send pictures in Snapchat and 10% post them there.

35% follow people on Snapchat. 30% follow jut their friends.

And 37.5% of people use effects and masks in other social networks.

10% of people don’t use Snapchat because they think that masks are stupid.

Just 7.5% don’t use Snapchat because their friends don’t use it.

7.5% don’t have Snapchat because they don’t understand how it works.

And 22.5% of students don’t use Snapchat because they see no reason to.

And 10% don’t use Snapchat because they don’t know what is it.

Conclusion 

Our survey showed that practically all students use social networks. VKontake being most popular and almost universal network, while others alternatives are also rather popular. The survey also showed that girls use social networks more frequently than boys. Younger children, especially boys, use more different networks. Findings are in line with data from Europe and United States.

The same survey yields different results in different schools and in different cities. And we can see that Snapchat in Russia is not as popular as it is in USA.

Although some people think that social media disrupt traditional communication, really they only change its appearance. Social networks, or social media, is modern way to communicate between people. It were letters in 19th century, phone calls in 20th century, and social media in 21th century.

The essence of communication remains the same: to know about others people life, to make them know about yours, to be not alone.

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VK_(social_networking)

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/ВКонтакте

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odnoklassniki

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Одноклассники_(социальная_сеть)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumblr

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumblr

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instagram

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instagram

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periscope_(app)

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Перископ_(мобильное_приложение)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snapchat

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snapchat

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASKfm

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ask.fm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google%2B

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google%2B

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegram_(software)

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegram_(мессенджер)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viber

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viber

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WhatsApp

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/WhatsApp

http://softolet.ru/socialnye-seti/sistemnyj-obzor-8-setej.html#i-32

https://www.emarketer.com/Article/Snapchat-Uptake-Varies-Among-Europes-Teens/1012567