Bibliography

Name
Professor
ENC 1101
27 November 2012
Annotated Bibliography
My working thesis statement is: Social networking sites can lead to lack of offline social skills.
Bilton, N. I live in the future & here 's how it works, why your world, work, and brain are being creatively disrupted. New York: Crown Business, 2011. Print.
Nick Bilton is a writer and reporter for the New York Times Bit blog. He focuses on many topics, but the research department he leads focuses on technology and how it will change the future. I Live in the Future & Here’s How it Works discusses this technological age and how the ever changing media is affecting human behavior. Bilton focuses on addressing this “technopocalypse” and reassures his reader that “the more things change the more they stay the same” giving an appeal to the older generations and making the younger generation feel less stupid. Throughout his book he touches on plenty of subjects but the one I focused on was his views and details about social networking sites and how they are becoming a source for “information overload” and communities that allows people with similar interest to “hang-out”. Bilton however, focuses on the positives of “information overload” and these virtual communities but does provide facts about how they can lead to a decrease in offline efforts to interact or attempts to create relationships with local human beings. I did agree with his positive points and can compare them to Professor Turkle’s negative views in my source Alone Together.
Turkle, Sherry. Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. 1. New York: Basic Books, 2011. Print. Professor Sherry Turkle teaches Social Studies of Science at MIT and is a licensed clinical psychologist. In Alone Together she compares the Internet to a ball and chain that keeps us tethered to the screens of our computers and cellphones. She summarizes her view in the statement “We expect more from technology and less from each other”. The first half of her book focuses on social robots and our relationships with these machines created to sweep our floors and provide us and our older family members a sense of companionship, one example she uses is a sex robot, that have now become a substitute for the difficulty of having to deal with other people. The next half of her book expresses her concern with online interaction and how it allows us to interact with one another despite being present in each other’s lives. Technological interaction such as email or text messaging also provides a great excuse for us to not have to speak in real time. It’s easy to say “I’ll get back to you later” instead of dealing with these social situations. This book is the perfect source for my thesis as it really cracks down on why technology affects our way of social interactions in a negative point of view. This relates to my previous source, I live in the Future and this is how it works, by providing a different viewpoint about technology and how it can affect our lives in a darker light.
Robert McMorris, et al. "An Examination Of The Reciprocal Relationship Of Loneliness And Facebook Use Among First-Year College Students." Journal Of Educational Computing Research 46.1 (2012): 105-117. Education Research Complete. Web. 25 Nov. 2012.
Professor Robert McMorris works for the University at Albany, State University of New York. He specializes in the field of measurement and evaluation. He is a member of the Division of Educational Psychology and Methodology. In his examination he details his findings about the relationship between first-year college students and their use of social networking sites. He focused on two questions. Is there an impact of loneliness on Facebook intensity and motive for using Facebook among first-year college students and is there an impact on Facebook intensity and motive for using Facebook on loneliness. He collected his data from 340 first-year college students. He found no reciprocal relationship in his results.
The results of the “Qualities of Peer Relations On Social Networking Websites” focuses more on the relationships of social network users as opposed to this study that focuses on college students who wish to cure their loneliness. This study, “An Examination…”, however provides some information about other studies that argue about reduced interactions and neglect with family relationships and friendships due to Internet use.

Szwedo, David E., Amori Yee Mikami, and Joseph P. Allen. "Qualities Of Peer Relations On Social Networking Websites: Predictions From Negative Mother-Teen Interactions." Journal Of Research On Adolescence (Blackwell Publishing Limited) 21.3 (2011): 595-607.Education Research Complete. Web. 25 Nov. 2012.
David E. Szwedo, Amori Yee Mikami, and Josepth P. Allen are all professors at the University of Virginia. Professor Allen studied clinical, community and developmental psychology. Szwedo has an M.A. in psychology, Mikami has a PhD and both of them studied with Professor Allen as their instructor. Their study examined teenagers, when they were thirteen, social relationships with their mothers and later, when they were twenty, their quality of social relationships with their peers online. What they concluded from their results was that poor quality relationships with their mothers at the younger age caused youths to prefer online communication and have poor relationship qualities with their online peers. They discuss their results and discuss the importance of family interactions at a young age and how it affects their future interactions with peers. This relates to “An Examination…” by researching a different aspect of social networking and in fact finding an adverse effect on social interactions of those users. Professor Turkle from Alone Together would probably be pleased with the findings of this research as it helps support her view that technology has put a dent in the quality of our conversations and relationships.

Amanda L. Hare, et al. "Adolescent Peer Relationships And Behavior Problems Predict Young Adults ' Communication On Social Networking Websites." Developmental Psychology 46.1 (2010): 46-56. Education Research Complete. Web. 25 Nov. 2012. Amanda L. Hare has a PhD. in Developmental and Community psychology. She works with Mikami, Allen, and Szwedo who provided another one of my sources. Her study examined communication on social networks and measured participants behavior and socialness when they were first thirteen or fourteen and then again at ages twenty through twenty-two. The results of the study revealed that adults who as teens were more negative in their offline interactions were less likely to have a social network account as an adult as compared to teenagers who were more positive in their offline interactions would have most likely kept their social network account as adults. The findings in this study can be compared to the results from “Qualities…” because they both find that offline interactions affect online interactions. If you are a negative person offline you probably are a negative person online and would probably avoid social networking in the first place because you are so down in the dumps. If you are a positive person you want to share the happiness of your life as much as you can and social networking helps make it something you don’t necessarily have to leave your house to do. This can also be compared to “An Examination…” as both studies found no evidence that social networking will make a lonely person happier.
I’ll probably change my thesis to social networking sites do not lead to lack of offline social skills after thoroughly reading through my chosen sources.

Bibliography: Bilton, N. I live in the future & here 's how it works, why your world, work, and brain are being creatively disrupted. New York: Crown Business, 2011. Print. Turkle, Sherry. Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. 1. New York: Basic Books, 2011. Print. Amanda L. Hare, et al. "Adolescent Peer Relationships And Behavior Problems Predict Young Adults ' Communication On Social Networking Websites." Developmental Psychology 46.1 (2010): 46-56. Education Research Complete. Web. 25 Nov. 2012.