Social Media and a Sense of Belonging

Citation:
van Eldik, Anne K., et al. "Urban & Online: Social Media Use among Adolescents and Sense of Belonging to a Super-Diverse City." Media and Communication, vol. 7, no. 2, 2019, p. 242+. Gale OneFile: Pop Culture Studies, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A596061954/PPOP?u=mlin_n_danvers&sid=PPOP&xid=95f03b6a. Accessed 15 Jan. 2020.

Finding this article was time-consuming. I read several others before I realized they wouldn't work for this assignment. I chose this one because it focused on how social media can affect identity, it was a study with data and charts, and it completely appealed to the nerd in me. I found it by searching the keywords "social media" in the Pop Culture Studies database. I narrowed the search down to articles and peer-reviewed only. I couldn't find a way to search by length but a quick Google search told me the average word count for a page was 500, so an article over 6000 words should fit the 12-page minimum. The databases were easy to navigate. The site is very user-friendly. The hardest part was going through the articles and selecting one.

This article is about a study conducted regarding the use of social media and the level of self-esteem and geographical identity on migrant and non-migrant adolescents. The researchers surveyed a group of 324 students aged 9 to 13, equally male and female and nearly half migrants, in a school setting. The purpose of the survey was to determine if social media engagement influenced the development of self-esteem and a feeling of belonging in the diverse city of Rotterdam in the Netherlands. The study looked at several contributing factors: access to cellular or computer technology, demographics, social media use, and the students' own feelings of self-esteem and identity. The researchers stated several questions and hypotheses before analyzing the data. They found social media did have a positive effect on urban identity, but the results on self-esteem were both positive and negative.

I found this article to be interesting. It was not about what I initially thought it would be by the title. It's important to know how using social media is affecting the next generation. While this study had its limitations, it did reach a group of people that are hard to get data on: migrants. It was insightful to read all the hypotheses and questions that the researchers were hoping to answer. The data followed what they had initially thought for the most part. It was interesting that the migrant children showed a stronger urban identity than the ones native to the city, though the reasoning is sound. Kids want to belong and though they may not feel like they are part of the nation, they feel closer to the city they reside in and connect with it in a positive way on social media. This paper makes me want to dive deeper to see what other ways social media is influencing the identity of the next generation.

Link to article: Urban & Online: Social Media Use among Adolescents and Sense of Belonging to a Super-Diverse City