Social networks abuse: The situation and the association of social media networks usage and the risk of different risk behaviours of hanoi high school students

155 HNUE JOURNAL OF SCIENCE DOI: 10.18173/2354-1075.2017-0185 Educational Sciences, 2017, Vol. 62, Iss. 12, pp. 155-164 This paper is available online at SOCIAL NETWORKS ABUSE: THE SITUATION AND THE ASSOCIATION OF SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORKS USAGE AND THE RISK OF DIFFERENT RISK BEHAVIOURS OF HANOI HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS Duong Thi Thu Huong Sociology Department, Academy of Journalism & Communication Abstract. The objective of this study is to analyze the situation of social networks usage and the association between the status of social media overusing and the risk of different risk behaviours of Hanoi high school students. The survey with sample size of more than 1300 students was conducted in early of 2016. The result showed that a third of all respondents spent from 3 hours a day or more for social networks' activities or online relationships. It was also very clear from the statistic that students who spent more than 3 hours a day or had more than 1000 online friends were at higher risk of having different risk behaviors such as: drug or substances using, physical and mental violent behaviors. The findings implicated for educational administrators, schools and parents to work together to identify a better solution to monitor and control social media networks assessing of high school students. Keywords: Social media networks, high school students, risk behaviours, abuse, adolescents. 1. Introduction Asian countries are classified as very prospective countries for the internet and social networks development. Among them, Vietnam is one of the leading countries in terms of the prevalence of the social networks usage. According to the statistics of Facebook in 2015, there was about a third of the population in Vietnam knew at least one social network as well as used social networks regularly. Among more than 90 million people, about 30% of them use social networks monthly and the number of the daily social networks' connection is about 20 million ones (about 22% of all population). It was also reported from Facebook that on average, each user spent about 2.5 hours per day for connecting with different social networks. Noticeably, many of them are young people and including high school students [13]. High school students are at the age between 15 and 18 years old; this is the late stage of adolescence with many changes in psychological and cognitive progress. They have passed the age of having with many different health risks, and they are believed to be at the highest physically fitness age. However, this is also a transition period to change to the mature age, so most of them are interested in discovering and experiencing the new things. In the era of the internet and social networks explosion all over the world today, it is very hard for young people to stand outside and being cold to the "technology storm". It is undeniable that social networks brings the plenty of benefits for the users. The main work of Nguyen Thi Kim Hoa and her colleagues who studied the students' usage social networks basically focused on the positive effects such as promoting their Received: October 12, 2017. Revised: December 5, 2017. Accepted: December 9, 2017. Contact: Duong Thi Thu Huong, e-mail address: duonghuong_xhh@yahoo.com Duong Thi Thu Huong 156 dynamic, assisting students in finding studying papers [5]. However, in addition to the positive aspects of the internet exploring and social networks connecting, there were also many negative effects. The recent study in South Korea has found that about 30% of South Koreans under the age of 18 were believed to be addicted of social networks [2; 3]. According to the study in Norway, the overuse of social networks could bring the potential symptoms similar to those who are addicted to gambling or other drugs [6; 8]. On the one hand, social networks' addiction of young people can lead to the time losing and it waste lots of time of young people which they could save to spend on their studying, doing exercise to improve their physical health or joining in different social and entertainment relationships in their real life. A number of studies had shown the evidences of Facebook's influencing and impacting on young people's behaviors and their studying. Studies in the US, for example, showed that spending too much time on social networks had affected students' learning outcomes, while also had influenced and inhibited their active participation in the extracurricular activities [9]. In recent years, along with the rapid spread of the internet, there are also many studies focusing on internet addiction and games online's addiction of the youth in Vietnam. A typical example of these studies including the one which was conducted by the Sociological Institute (Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences) and its focus was the volume and status of the involvement in game online of students. The other ones which had explored the status of the students involvement in games online and they were conducted by Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh city's Department of Education and Training [9- 11]. These studies were mainly focused on the situation of students' involvement in game online and the impacts and side effects of spending too much time for it [9-11]. The findings from the above studies showed that this is really a considerable concern and it requires a sufficient monitoring and intervention from family, school and society. If online game topic has attracted lots of the large-scale studies, there are not many studies focusing on the social media networks usage and the effects of social networks abuse among high school students. From the practical requirement for understanding in more detail about the social networks usage situation, we conducted a study focusing on the social networks overuse among high school students in Hanoi. The findings could be the practical evidences to contribute to develop an effective strategy on behaviors change for the high school students and then contribute for building a healthy life style for our future generations. 2. Content 2.1. Methodology Quantitative method with a prepared questionnaire was conducted with a sample size of more than 1300 students. Participants were selected from Hanoi high schools and the survey was conducted in the beginning of 2016. The sampling process was divided into different phases to select representing districts, schools, classes and then to select students for doing the survey. At the first phase, 3 districts were selected among 12 districts in Hanoi. Then at each district, one public school and one nonpublic school were selected from the list of each type of the schools. At each selected school, two classes of each grade (10, 11, 12) were selected randomly, therefore six classes of each school had been selected. All students from these selected classes were invited to do the survey after receiving information about the goals and the anonymity of this survey. They were also informed that their participations were voluntary and they could stop involvement at any stage without explanation. Social networks abuse: The situation and association of social media networks usage 157 In total, 1333 respondents had completed their questionnaires, representing for 36 classes of six high schools in three different Hanoi districts. 2.2. The main findings 2.2.1. The status of social networks'usage of Hanoi high school students and the associated factors of their overuse social networks With the popular and the wide coverage of internet in Hanoi, social network involvement and participation has become very popular among high school students. Social networks environment has provided many attractive functions and features for young people: they can expose their opinions and emotions without face-to-face meetings or communication with other individuals or groups. They could also interact with each other, share updated information as well as update their status frequently. For many students, their social life in their social media networks is no less important than their everyday life at homes and at schools. Acording to the data collected from the survey, 97.6% of the students currently involved in different social networks and only 2.4% of all said they were not the members of any social networks. It can be seen that almost students of each class have already involved in at least one social media network, only one or two students of each class were not the members of any social networks, probably due to the fact that they did not have smartphones or computers connecting to the internet or due to their family regulation that forbidding their connection to the social networks. Along with the popularity of the social networks connections, students have also spent a considerable time daily for their online's activities and relationships in this new social environment. In terms of the estimation time students have spent on social networks' activities daily, the statistics of this study has been showed on the following table: Table 1. Average time students spent on social networking daily Everage time per day Number % 1. Under 1 hour 243 18.2 2. From 1 hour to less than 2 hours 319 23.9 3. From 2 hour to less than 3 hours 323 24.2 4. From 3 hours or more 414 31.1 The table above showed that more than 55% of students usually spend about 2 hours or more per day on social networks' activities and nearly 45% of all students spend less than 2 hours per day for it. According to Facebook's statistic, Vietnamese people usually spent about 2.5 hours per day on average for social networks' activities. In comparison to the findings from this study with the respondents comming from Hanoi high schools, the difference in amount of time spending for social networks is unremarkable between our study and the Facebook's statistic. Meanwhile, the respondents of our study are at high school age and they are expected to spend most of the time for their studying, for their extracurricular activities and for their family connections rather than spending too much time on different social networks. At high school ages, students usually try to have a broaden connection with more social relationships such as their friends from different schools, their friends from formal and informal classes. This situation makes their friendships and their other social relationships to be more Duong Thi Thu Huong 158 complicated. In addition to their complex of their real-life friendships, social networks with their online friends are believed to be more complicated as there are not only their real life friends to be added on their friend list, but there are also many ones that they don't know each other or met each other in their real-life, were also added on their online friend lists. Having many online friends could be the associated factor for increasing the complexity of their social networks, in addition, it also puts additional pressure on them to interact and maintain their online relationships. Research showed that up to one-third of the all students in the sample survey said that they have 1000 or more online friends and this is an impressive figure. In order to identify the differences in spending time for specific group of students who usually spend too much time for social media networks or abuse time for social media networks's activities, some statistical analyses have been conducted from the survey as be demonstrated on table 2: Table 2. The difference between male and female students in spending time daily for social networks and their amount of online friends connection Total time connecting to social networks per day and the number of online friends Male students Female students Number % Number % Total time connecting to social media per day 1. Under 1 hour 154 23.1 89 14.1 2. From 1 hour to less than 2 hours 181 27.2 138 21.8 3. From 2 hour to less than 3 159 23.9 164 25.9 4. From 3 hours or more 172 25.8 242 38.2 The amount of online friends 1. Have less than 1000 online friends 479 69.5 403 62.2 2. Have from 1000 online friends or more 210 30,5 241 37,4 In terms of the difference between male and female students in social media network usage, it was clear from the findings that female students usually spent more time per day for social networks' activitiies and usually have higher amount of online friends than male students. There were about 40% of all female respondents spending from 3 hours or more per day for social media network while this proportion among male students was lower with only about 26% of all. There was about more than 30% of all male respondents said that they have from 1000 online friends or more, while this percentage among all female students was higher and occupied for 37.4%. Another social factor associated with the difference in the status of social media usage was their status of having or ever had boyfriend/girlfriend. The detail difference in each data has been showed in the graph 1. It showed from graph 1 that the proportion of students who usually spent from 3 hours per day or more for social media networks among a groups of the students who had or ever had boyfriend/girlfriend was 40%, while this percentage among ones who do not have or ever have boyfriend/girlfriend was only 20.2%. The difference in the total estimation time spending daily for social networks between these two groups is very high. In terms of the students who had from 1000 online friends or more, this proportion among ones who had boyfriend/girlfriend was nearly two time Social networks abuse: The situation and association of social media networks usage 159 higher than the proportion of all students who hadn't got boyfriend/girlfriend. In addition, the proportion of the students who usually spent too much time for social media networks is much lower among the group who had a good education achievement in comparison to ones who did not get the good education achievement in the latest semester. There was only 29% of all students with good education achievement reported that they spent from 3 hours per day or more for social networks connection and this percentage among low education achievement group was more than 41%. Graph 1. The association bewteen the status of having or not having boyfriend/girlfriend and the social media network usage of high school students (%) In addtition to some social demographic factors, the diferences in their school's types (public and non public school) and the location of the schools are also the factors associated with their status of using social media networks. The proportions of non - public school's students spending from 3 hours or more as well as connecting with about 1000 online friends or more were much more higher than the proportions of students from public schools. Students from Hoan Kiem district's schools, which located in a central of Hanoi and known as the oldest district of Hanoi, tend to spend much more time for social media networks than students from two other districts which are known as the considerably younger districts (41.3% compared to 28.6% and 24.2%). The school managers of these selected high schools also had the same opinion that it was very hard for them to control or monitor students connecting to social media networks as many of them had their own smartphones which can connect to internet and social media networks at any time. In addition, internet devices were also very popular in urban families and many of students can access to these tools in order to connect to social media networks without any restriction. Teachers and school managers of the nonpublic schools in the survey sample said that they had already recognized many students could not control their connecting to the internet and social media networks during their studying time, they seem to abuse their time for their social network connection's activities. In order to cope with it, teachers and managers from some of the nonpublic schools had encouraged students to give all their smartphones to be kept in the locked boxes and they can receive back them in the break times. However, this was believed to be a temporary solution and they also expected to have reasonable and sustainable solutions to deal with this situation. Duong Thi Thu Huong 160 Table 3. The association between school types (public and private school) & school's location with the status of using social media network (%) The status of using social media network School type School's location Non public school Public school Bac Tu Liem Cau Giay Hoan Kiem (The central district) Estimation time connecting to social networks per day 1. Under 1 hour 20.1 17 22.6 21.6 13.2 2. From 1 hour to less than 2 hours 27.9 20.4 25.4 26.2 22.4 3. From 2 hour to less than 3 24.2 25.7 23.4 27.9 23.0 4. From 3 hours or more 27.8 36.8 28.6 24.2 41.3 The estimation of online friends of each students 1. Have less than 1000 online friends 71.8 59.3 65.5 64 68.7 2. Have from 1000 online friends or more 28.2 40.7 34.5 36 31.3 In terms of the family's characteristics, the survey's data showed that student's parents marriage status and the availability of the internet devices in their families are also the associated factors of their social networks status. The proportion of students spending 3 hours or more for social networks' activities among broken or saperated families was much more higher than the proportion of students living in both parents families (51.5% compared to 28.9%). It is possible that in broken or saperated families, students received unsufficent attention and they only live with a single parent or living with their grandparents. The unsufficent attention and connections from their families could be the risk factor motivating them to find another relationships and connections outside their families, including virtual relationships on social networks. In addition to the time abused spending for social networks, students from broken/seperated families also had much more online friends than the students from both parents families: 41.6% of all living with single parent compared to 32.7% of all living with both parents families that had from 1000 online friends or more. The proportion of students from families that had computers, laptops, tablets or other internet devices spending from 3 hours or more each day for social network connection was more popular than ones from families without internet connection devices (32.6% compared to 28.6%). 2.2.2. The association between social network usage and the risk of having different risk behaviors of Hanoi high school students It is undeniable that internet as well as social media networks have provided many possitive chances for students to improve their studying everyday as well as help them to maintain their social connections and friendship easier. However, at the transition age, it is not easy for all of them to manage their time and control their behaviors on the social networks' environment. Spending too many Social networks abuse: The situation and association of social media networks usage 161 hours for it could be a risk which could effect their studying time and their time spending for extracurricular activities as well as for their real-life's interactions. In addition, the data from the survey has demonstrated clearly about the association between the total time spending for social media connections as well as the amo