A) report on your own SNS usage, with reference to at least one of the background material from the course outline.

Social networking sites for me are a new and some what overwhelming thing.Before staring university this semester my history of social networking sites was limited. I didn’t have a facebook, twitter,tumblr or a myspace. I couldn’t understand why people invest so much time on them, as time for me was scarce.And i found that even logging on and checking my email was some what of a chore.However since then i have now come to realise that i was missing out big time. Iv come from online usage of 2 hours a week  to using social networking sites up to 2 hours a day, Which from reading an  Article from the  Journal Of Computing  Mediated Communication, 2 hours is about the average time young people send on social networking sites (Notley 2009).

Social networking sites have definitely influenced the way i communicate with my friends and even my family. I have noticed that i now hang out to get my facebook hit. While the idea of putting personal information out there for every one to see dose worry me some what, i tend to use facebook as my choice of SNS as it has more privacy options i feel than myspace.Looking at my facebook friends  you could say that it is all about quality not quantity as they are all people that i communicate with regularly.this coincides with Boyd,Ellison (2007) stating that  people who use SNS ‘primarily communicating with people who are already a part of their extended social network’.

Notley, T 2009, Journal of Compute Mediated Communications, Yonug people,Online networks, Social Inclusions,Vol 14, Iss 4,pg 1208-1227

Boyd, Danah and Ellison, Nicole (2007), ‘Social Networking Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship’, Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, vol.13, no.1, pp. 210-230