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Investigating

When I was first introduced to the Personal Project, I immediately knew that I wanted

to do something related to art, because after starting my current school, my interest in art kept

increasing and I was always motivated by my art teacher, Mrs. Moore, to carry on with my

skills in the future. I decided to use art in this project as a way of raising awareness to a problem

and I wanted this problem to be global and up-to-date, so everybody in our school could relate

to it, even though they do not suffer from the problem themselves. After a lot of thinking and

observing, I decided that I wanted to work on social media's effects on our society and

relationships. This was a great topic for me because as a teenager born in 2001, I witnessed just

how fast the Internet and social media became popular and how it changed our concepts of

friendships, socializing, and communicating. I never considered these changes to be bad or

harmful, but over time I started to realize how we, as a society, came to the point that sometimes

it is more fun for us to scroll down on social media than to go out with friends or spend time

with our family. Getting likes on a photo that we share became more important for us than the

memory it represents. We started to stalk other people on their social media accounts to get to

know them, rather than having an actual conversation. I realized how damaging these changes

are for our relationships and this started to irritate me, therefore I made a decision to change

my utilization of social media and use my Personal Project to create awareness for the others.

After deciding on the topic it was easy for me to link it to a Global Context. I choose Identities

and Relationships due to the fact that I was going to explore the changes in our relationships

as a society as well as strengthening mine by using social media to a lesser extent.

The goal I set myself was to create a set of drawings to create awareness in our school

in our school about how our relationships as humans have been affected by social media.

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Therefore, I wanted my products to be striking and to visualize the issue in an eye-catching

way. Reaching my goal was going to be challenging because I needed to work on a professional

level to create remarkable art pieces which require a lot of patience, attention and time. I did

not want to create only one piece of art because I wanted to capture different aspects of social

media, so I decided on three.

I had to do research about social media before starting, so I could be more accurate and

effective. I decided to start my research by focusing on the effects of excessive social media

usage on people, then I could narrow it down to relationships. To begin the research, I ordered

the book Internet And Social Media Addiction by Andrea C. Nakaya from Danish Library. It

was a book full of research results and data, showing the reasons and results of social media

addiction, including damages in social relationships. Also, I found a report called "Facebook

Reports Second Quarter 2016 Results", which is published by Facebok Inc, and it showed the

number of users and their usage habits for the year. It was helpful as it gave me a perspective

of how much time is actually spent on the application. Furthermore, I visited Paw Research

Center's website to look at their data collection about social media's effects on teen

relationships. It was a valuable website, the information I gathered from there took my

understanding further as it showed how effective social media is on teenage relationships and

how it shapes our youth.

When I was done investigating about social media's effects on people and relationships,

I figured that I could try to find other artists who have worked on the same topic to get

inspiration (Appendix 1). The first artist that I found was Jason Raish, whose illustration was

at the top of an article about millennials' workplace behaviors and their phone addiction. The

artist also has a website where he displays his artwork. The other artist's name was Liam Francis

and he created black and white cartoons about technology addiction which were quite funny.

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Both of the artists gave strong messages with their art which related to social media. It was

helpful for me to form ideas in my head.

To make sure that all of the information I found online and from the book was reliable,

I applied Origin, Purpose, Value and Limitation (OPVL) system to my sources (Appendix 2).

This helped me determine which information was valid and helpful for my

project.

After all the data I found online, I thought I could maybe ask the students in our school

to tell me their social media usage habits so I could create my art pieces in a way which they

can relate. Therefore, I created a survey that had 10 questions (Appendix 3). I got 74 answers

as results. It was less than I expected, but since it wasn't the most important part of my research

and the data I got was congruent with my previous researches, I decided that it was time for

me to start my project.

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Appendices

Appendix 1- Artists and Their Artworks That I Was Inspired By

❖ Jason Raish

❖ Liam Walsh

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Appendix 2- OPVL Chart

1. Internet and Social Media Addiction by Andrea C. Nakaya

ORIGIN PURPOSE VALUE LIMITATION

The book was This book is useful This source is quite

The purpose of the
published on January to create awareness objective therefore it
information is to
1, 2015, by Andrea of Internet addiction is easier to trust
inform the audience
C. Nakaya. He is a and it’s since the facts can
about the Internet
published author and consequences on always be checked
young adult book addiction by different aspects of and controlled. The
editor. The date of showing data from everyday life. This author is not a
the book shows that various researches. source has been person who is
it is up to date which Since the helpful for my known to have a
is important to make information comes project because it clear stand on this
sure the information from research, it is gives facts that topic, therefore I
is relevant. not the author’s strengthened my don’t think it could
personal opinions. opinions or formed be biased.
The author stays new ones about
rather objective social media.
throughout the book
and only focuses on
facts. So it’s
possible to say that
the source is
reliable,

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2. “Facebook Reports Second Quarter 2016 Results" by Facebok Inc.

ORIGIN PURPOSE VALUE LIMITATION

The purpose of this This source was not This is an objective

This source comes
source was to as useful as the source that is
from the Facebook
release data about others because I reliable. There can’t
Inc. company,
the company’s only gathered be an institutional
which is one of the
second quarter in information about bias since this is a
biggest companies
2016. The document Facebook user formal data based
in the world. It was
included financial habits, which were report. All they give
posted on 27 July
and economic only numbers but to the reader is facts.
2016, which means
highlights. The after analyzing the
that the information
information was results, the source
is up to date. The
objective since the really shows just
author is not clear.
company is obliged how much we spend
However, this is not
to release correct time on social
a big problem
and unbiased media. It was good
because the
information. have that knowledge
publisher is an
official big before starting.
company.

3. “Teens, Technology and Relationships” by Pew Reseach Center

ORIGIN PURPOSE VALUE LIMITATION

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This article was The purpose of the This source is
This source is useful
published in October article is to inform reliable because the
to get an opinion of
1, 2015 by people, especially research company is
how social media
Amanda Lenhart, teens, about the quite a big one and
affects teenagers’
Monica Anderson effects of social also the fact that
lives. However since
and Aaron Smith, media on their there are three
this research wasn’t
which means the relationships, authors who have
global and only done
source is up to date especially romantic written it makes it a
in the U.S. the
and therefore many ones. The authors stronger and a more
results might not be
teens can relate to remain objective objective article.
reflecting the
the results. It was through the article
general effects of
published on Pew since they are
social media on
Research Center’s obliged to give
teens all over the
Website. information only.
world but it’s still
Because it’s
valid information.
collected data, the
Since my audience
information could
were teenagers, this
be accepted as fact.
source was helpful
for me to get an idea
about what to
include in my
artwork.

Appendix 3- Survey Results

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Appendix 4- Research about Social Media and Its Effects on People&Relationships

I learned from an article in the American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse in

2010 that the U.S. and Europe have Internet addiction rates of between 1.5 percent and 8.2

percent of the population. In some Asian countries with higher Internet access, the numbers

are higher. For example, in 2010 China Daily reported that 15 percent of 18-25 year-olds

had internet addiction (Nakaya),

I also wanted to learn about the most popular website, Facebook, and see if they had any

data about their users. These are the most important results that I have found.

● There are over 1.7 billion monthly active Facebook accounts worldwide, and it

keeps increasing.

● The increase is estimated 15 percent per year.

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 ● For June 2016, about 1.12 billion people logged into Facebook daily.

● In a survey of 1801 US adults, the Paw Research Center stated that 63 percent of

Facebook users visit the website at least once a day. 40 percent of the respondents

said that they would do so multiple times a day. (2013)

● The time spent on Facebook average is 20 minutes. (Facebook Inc.)

In addition, I also learned that social media has a big impact on romantic relationships.

For example, according to a survey result that I have found online, 36 percent of

married/partnered couples felt that their partner was distracted by their phone when they

were together (Lenhart, Anderson, Smith).

An another information I got from my research was how time consuming social media

really was.

● According to a poll, 75 percent of the people stay online more than they intended.

● 41 percent of people choose to be online over going out with other people.

● 50 percent of people lose sleep because of being online late at night.

● 42 percent of people think their productivity suffers because of the internet.

● According to a survey by Times magazine in 2012, 29 percent of the respondents

say that they check their phones first thing in the morning.

● According to a 2012 study by the security app Lookout, 30 percent of people check

phones during a meal, 24 percent while driving and 9 percent during religious

worships. (Nakaya)

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