Eric Myers

English 1201

Dr. Cassel

January 18th 2019

Research Proposal

As many know today's society is full of online communication and sharing

information. I take advantage of these tools everyday. But there are many things that

people do as extracurricular activities online. I like to call these activities as social

media. I call them this because they are not necessary like an email or calling/texting.

But social media is a huge part of how teens promote themselves, it being a positive for

negative way. When thinking about this I was told once that having social media is a

dangerous thing to have because of the effects it has on your brain, anxiety, or even

depression. But being a confident individual with a strong personality I do not see the

affects in my life. So that thinking brought me to a couple of questions. What factors are

involved? For example, time usage and age groups. Or can social media change the

way our brain works? After going through all the questions I finally landed on one that

encompassed all of my questions. What factors contribute to the different physiological

effects that social media has on teenagers?

I have very neutral views on social media. To elaborate on that more there is

some things I like about it but other things I do not. For example Instagram is fun

because it cool to see what old friends are up to or to see the touchdown throw Baker

Mayfield threw at the Browns game. But there is also an issue of self judgement and the
question of do people like what I post or do people think I am cool and relevant. I think

that this is a great topic to bring to people's attention because it is very relevant in our

generation and future generations. To understand how social media affects teens

brains. I do not know a lot about this topic that is why I would like to research it.

Some things that I need to know about my topic include: how different ages and

sexes affect the brain differently, time spent and how it affects, different effects on the

mood/brain function. Some places that I hope to find some of this information is on the

library database, trusted internet sources, and proven scientific data charts and for

explanations. Overall I believe that this will be an interesting topic to do research on.