(O)sociala medier? : En jämförande kvalitativ attitydundersökning om människors användning av sociala medier och dess inverkan på deras liv och umgänge

Sammanfattning: This essay aims to find out what impact social media have on the daily lives of Swedish people in regard to their usage and sociability. In order to find that out we have performed four group interviews with a total of 16 people from two different age categories that were later compared.   To analyze the empirical data we’ve used the theories on the Network Societies by Jan Van Dijk as a help of understanding. The results show that social media have become an integrated part in the lives of our informants and that a consdierable amount of time is spent on them everyday. In the younger group Facebook was considered the most useful medium as it makes the planning of events easier and can be used as a way of keeping oneself updated on news as well as on the lives of others. Also the older group were of all social media most frequently using Facebook, both for checking updates and producing posts themselves. Through the interviews we also got to the conclusion that social media could have a positive as well as a negative effect on the social lives of our informants. The easy way of connecting to people and communicating with bigger groups helps in the organizing of meet-ups and thereby in the forming of relations. However, the informants expressed an annoyance over others using social media while spending time with them. There was also an awareness of doing so themselves and therefore experiencing a divide of attention. People would then feel less connected to each other in the actual physical world and in the face-to-face talking which could affect their relationships negatively. Most of the interviewed did not view this as any major issue though.