Hypothesis:

Based on the theoretical study, three separate yet related to each other
hypotheses, are presented. The questions were created taking in to
consideration the hypotheses. The given answers from the respondents could
later on, along with theory and the empirical study form a basis for the
discussion.

1. If an individual becomes addicted to social media, he does not question

online privacy regulations.
Research conducted on the brains abnormalities by Fredholm (2007) and Briggs
(2012) as well as Hu (2014) clearly shows that an individual can become
addicted to the Internet and particularly to social media. The supposed rewards
one receives visiting social media sites are similar to those rewards an alcohol
or drug abuser receives. The reward is in this context the dopamine extraction in
the brain. As more dopamine is released the more an individual wants to
continue that habit that enables it to happen. In this context that is staying online
on social media sites, chatting and writing posts about one’s personal life.
Though Internet addiction has not to date yet become fully accepted as a
condition by all scientists it has by all means caught the attention of scientists,
psychologists and researchers. It is therefore vital to keep on looking at the
consequences of a strong Internet abuse.

A raised question is if whether or not an individual in fact questions privacy

regulations at any time or if the reward system is so powerful that it makes an
individual to disregard the regulations completely, not considering the hazards.

2. If a website offers its online services for free, we do not care to read the
given terms and conditions.
As when an individual becomes addicted to the Internet one simply does not
care to read any given terms and conditions though they are not of concern for
the individual. All that matters is that the individual gets to be on the given
social media site and keep receiving the dopamine jolt that follows by writing
information about ones day to day activities and receiving positive feedback on
those posts from one’s peers.
That individuals commonly do to appreciate the fact that they have to sign any
privacy statement, yet that they are concerned that anyone from the “outside”
would gain access to their information. A question that can be raised is whether
or not the aspect of the online service being free of charge plays an important
factor or not and if it is simply the matter of the dopamine jolt that makes
people disregard the given terms and conditions or if there are other factors.
there are many ways in which an organization can find and exploit information
online. For example by using web bots or by making prediction on customers or
by making profiles.

3. The lack of regulations on Big Data, enable managers to exploit the data
in a ways that harms online privacy and security.
there are many ways in which an organization can find and exploit information
online. For example by using webbots or by making prediction on customers or
by making profiles.
As uttered by Conti (2009) Big Data has in many ways become a question of
ethics rather than regulation, this due to the fact that it simply is very difficult to
create good and long lasting online regulations. If Big Data then now has
become a question of ethics, managers of large organizations are faced with a
big dilemma on whether or not to store data for longer periods of time and what
type of data is to be considered as sensitive. Coe (2015) states that the lack of
regulations allow managers to store as much information as they wish on their
users and that not many managers are keen on changing there ways. Storing
information for large periods of time enable hackers to gain access to the
information at any given moment. It is to be considered what kind of change
must occur in order for the organizations managers to change their ways and if
perhaps a change in the common individuals Internet usage could result in a
change as well. It is also important to try and understand just why it is difficult
to create good regulations online and what can be done about it.
Access to information is nevertheless highly valued today as it enables
organizations at any scale to make large profits. It is many times the customer’s
themselves that provide organizations with a lot of information about them,
while disregarding privacy concerns. This is nonetheless connected to the first
and second hypothesis and Internet addiction and as these are later on explored
so is this final hypothesis.
  Age groups on social media:

i. Over 65s:
We’re making a point of starting this guide with the over 65s age group
– because amongst some social media marketers there remains an unfortunate
tendency to under-value older audiences.
There’s a pretty good reason why some marketers make this oversight –
according to a study social media account ownership amongst over 65s was
down at 12% as recently as 2011. By 2018, just seven years later, it was
reported that this figure had risen to 37%. Even if you’re just a year or two
behind the curve, it would still be easy to misgauge this age group’s value and
influence.
Whilst younger age groups are showing a tendency towards using a wider
variety of social media, notably including Instagram and Snapchat, the
overwhelming majority of social users over the age of 65 solely use Facebook,
41% of over 65s are currently using Facebook, with LinkedIn a distant second
on 9%. From a short-term perspective, this tells us that Facebook is the channel
to focus on when it comes to marketing to older people – though that could all
change in the space of a few years.
Senior Facebook users have generally demonstrated a tendency towards using
the platform primarily to network and participate in conversations; in contrast
with the youngest users, many of whom are more interested in identity-forming
activities like posting selfies. Key topics for older social users are health and
community.

ii. Aged 50-64:

Who could have predicted, ten years ago, that by now the majority of
those aged 50-64 would have a social media profile? As is stands, around
65% of people in this age group have a Facebook profile, whilst
significant minorities are also signed up to other social media like
LinkedIn (24%) and Instagram (21%)
Amongst this group is a notable concentration of high-ranking
professionals who use the business-oriented social network, LinkedIn
(24% of the age group have a profile).
The patronage of corporate decision-makers has contributed to
LinkedIn’s emergence as perhaps the single most important platform for
social selling.
iii. Aged 30-49:
Of the many points to be made on how thirty- and forty-somethings are
using social media, perhaps the most striking – and surely the most
topical – is that those aged between thirty and forty-nine are easily the
most likely to get their news from social media. We found that 40% of
those aged 30-49 use social media as a news source, compared with 26%
of 50-to-64-year-olds and just 25% of those aged 18-29. Facebook can
lay claim to the highest proportion of users browsing for news – 45%.
This presents marketers with an opportunity on one hand and a challenge
on the other. There’s clearly significant scope to target this age group
with quality content marketing via social media – but the caveat is that
most of us will need to aim for quality over quantity if our content is to
embody the quality journalism that many adults are now seeking on
social, as well as in print.
The increasing use of LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook as news sources
has reframed perceptions of what social media can be. Until recently,
much of the discussion around social and news has revolved around the
empowering of social media users to break news faster than any reporter
ever could – an inversion which has profoundly changed how news is
sourced and reported by journalists. Now, we’re talking about social
media platforms as more than just wellsprings of news – we’re talking
about them as curators, distributors and publishers in their own right.

iv. Millennials:
Like other aspects of digital, the rate of change in social media – its
forms, its platforms, its uses – is growing at an exponential rate. One of
the consequences of this trend is an increasing rate of behavioural change
amongst new web users. For this reason, we see a far greater variation
within generational age groups towards the lower end of the scale.
Amongst younger millennials, we can clearly see the emergence of two
key trends. Firstly, those aged 18-24 are showing a far stronger tendency
than their older peers towards using image-led social media. According to
a recent survey by Harvard IOP – How Millennials Use social media –
51% of those aged 18-24 use Instagram, vs. 34% of 25-29-year-olds. The
disparity in Snapchat use is even more pronounced, at 42% to 20% in the
younger group’s favour.
This isn’t to say that Facebook and Twitter are falling off the face of the
Earth – in fact, these relative antiques also enjoy higher uptake amongst
younger millennials, though the disparity in usage is smaller (Facebook
use is 83% vs 82%; Twitter use is 43% vs 35%). This presents us with
our next key finding: that social media use is more widespread and
platform spread is greater amongst younger millennials.
What to do with this information? The first, and perhaps the most
important point is that Snapchat and Instagram need to play a part in your
social strategy – especially is your target audience falls within the late
millennial age range. To this end, there are several options at your
disposal. You might:
• Engage agencies specialising in Instagram and Snapchat, who can
deliver or support your work
• Factor Instagram and Snapchat into the ongoing training of your
existing team members
• Hire junior staff who are active users of the relevant social media. You
might consider people with established and widely-followed Instagram
profiles as especially suitable candidates.
• Download the apps onto your own phone and start using them. If you’re
going to communicate with customers using a certain channel, you should
surely have some idea of the user’s experience. There’s no better way to
gain that insight than to become a user yourself. Even if you’re a
generation or two removed from the average Snapchatter, what better
excuse to wind up your kids/nephews/nieces/etc.?
Now to address our second key learning – those younger millennials are
using a greater variety of social media. One of the toughest challenges of
marketing to a multi-channel audience is keeping track of interactions on
a channel-by-channel basis – especially if you want to market
programmatically.
The preferred solution to this problem is to create a single customer view
(SCV), in which data on every channel you use is compiled into a single
analytics interface. This will allow you to view all of your marketing
activity on a customer-by-customer basis, to spot trends and interplay
across channels, and ultimately to deliver strategically airtight
omnichannel marketing.
Another important point to consider across the full millennial age group
is the importance of what some marketers refer to as “dark social” –
which simply means social media interactions we can’t measure, like
instant messages sent through apps like Facebook Messenger and
WhatsApp.
Dark social is problematic because it’s much harder to understand the
value of dark social engagement than it is to measure, say, the conversion
rate of a marketing email. In this sense, dark social bears some similarity
harder-to-measure marketing methods like TV advertising and billboard
campaigns.
Digital marketers have come up with a few decent ideas on how to work
out the value and volume of your dark social traffic, largely based around
taking more holistic approaches to measurement. Add tags to the landing
page URLs you distribute on social, try to identify a correlation between
 successful social campaigns and spikes in your direct traffic, and most
importantly of all, be aware that dark social is a factor in your social
marketing performance.

v. Generation Z:
Not only is understanding how teenagers use social important to
optimising marketing campaigns in the short-term – it’s also crucial to
our ability to better adapt our long-term strategies. Today’s teens display
a continuation of the trend we’ve seen among millennials – towards
higher uptake of the leading image-led social platforms, Snapchat and
Instagram. Companies like Magic Pony Technology (recently acquired by
Twitter) are currently developing better AI image recognition technology
– so we would not be surprised to see social ad targeting based on the
content of the images people post in the not-too-distant future. this article
on reshaping ecommerce personalisation may offer some insight.
Another important trend amongst teenage web users is strong engagement
with video content. A 2016 report from the marketing agency Fluent
produced the sensational finding that Generation Z social users 32%
watch online video for over an hour a day.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Remarkably, 30% of the teenage
respondents to Fluent’s survey watch over two hours of online video per
day – of whom 21% watch over three hours per day! All those video
views may not be happening quite where you think – whilst YouTube
remained a core video platform for 80% of the survey’s respondents,
Facebook was closing fast on 79%.
The high use of video amongst today’s teenagers points to a need for
marketers to improve video production capacity. Marketing managers
now face an important decision: do we increase capacity fast by hiring
established video specialists; or do we take a slow-burning approach
through upskilling our existing workforce, e.g. by training graphic
designers in video editing, or by training copywriters in script-writing.
Like the Millennials before them, Generation Z are clearly leaning
towards image-led social platforms such as Instagram and Snapchat. We
refer you back to our advice from the previous section on improving your
Snapchat/Insta capabilities.
 Social media platforms:
Platforms Advantages
Twitter It is the largest microblogging platform
where users generate tweets, retweet,
and like postings. The use of hashtags
and Twitter handles increases the
engagement of the account holders.
Photo- and video-sharing services make
the platform attractive for education and
live streaming of meetings. Editors may
moderate their journal accounts for
boosting the immediate impact of
publications
Facebook Globally popular, actively used for live
streaming meetings, and
interconnecting with Zoom, YouTube,
and other video-sharing sites
Instagram This platform is employed for sharing
photos, medical images, and videos.
Journals that predominantly publish
images may benefit from their active
presence on this site
YouTube This is an online video-sharing platform
with a variety of services for educators,
researchers, and editors and navigation
to many other online channels. Online
meetings can be live streamed and
archived on this site
Limitations
Limited number of
characters in a tweet (280),
numerous Twitter bots with
indiscriminate automatic
posts, limited use in non-
Anglophone countries
Mostly used for personal
and friendly
communications, low
weight in terms of
alternative metrics
No weight for altimetric
aggregate score calculation,
small number of journals
with Instagram accounts
Reliability and quality of
posted videos vary widely.
Some videos are
promotional, misleading,
and damaging for patient
health
  Occupation:

i. Students: