Running head: FACEBOOK TO VIETNAMES STUDENTS 1

Banking Academy of VietNam

ITP International Training Program






FACEBOOK TO VIETNAMESE STUDENTS
Student: Julie F05E
Instructor: Miss Fiona
FACEBOOK TO VIETNAMESE STUDENTS 2
Abstract
Facebook is considered as the most popular social network website nowadays. Created in
2004 by Mark Zukerberg, a Havard student, up to now, Facebook has more than 900 million
active users all over the world and the majority is students. Because of its popularity, Facebook
has a great influence on students lives. This research is to examine its effect level on them.
Using data from a survey of one hundred Vietnamese university students, I discovered a very
close relationship between Facebook and students personal lives. For these findings, I analyse
situations of using Facebook, where problems are, and make some recommendations on how to
address them.
Keywords: Facebook, social network, Mark Zukerberg



FACEBOOK TO VIETNAMESE STUDENTS 3
Introduction
Facebook has become rapidly widespread among almost universities over the world with
estimated rate of eighty-five percent of undergraduates actively participating in its services
(Michael Arrington, 2005). What attracts students is its ability to connect to friends, upload
photographs, play a host of games. In spite of these practical benefits, schools, parents, even
students start to concern about risks associated with Facebook. Having said that, students
themselves have not been completely aware of the consequences caused by Facebook. That is the
reason why they still spend much time on Facebook.
My research will provide a comprehensive view of Facebook, including the brief history,
popularity and effect, concurrently expand on recent literatures by studying Facebooks effect on
students deeply. I build up two question to answer: How popular is Facebook among Vietnames
students?, How does Facebook affect their lives?
History of Facebook
The predecessor of Facebook is a Hot or not version which is called Facemash. On 4
th

February, 2004, Mark Zuckerberg, a student from psychology department at Harvard University,
founded Thefacebook. Surprisingly, only one day after being launched, more than one
thousand Havard students signed up and the numbers of registers continued to increase each day.
Realizing thefacebooks growing in popularity, Mr Zuckerburg cooperated with two other
students, Duston Moskovitz and Chris Hughes market their product to other college students.
Gradually, it expanded to Ivy League schools, Boston universities and other colleges in US.
Within a few months, thefacebook became a national college network website. It became
Facebook after the domain was purchased for $200,000 in August 2005. Nevertheless, at that
FACEBOOK TO VIETNAMESE STUDENTS 4
time, Facebook only allowed universities, schools, organizations, etc in US, UK and English
speaking countries to sign up. It was not until end of the year 2006 that Facebook has expanded
to everyone. At the same time, Facebook was offered by Yahoo to buy out at a price of one
million dollars, but Mr Zuckerburg refused. One year later, another proposal from CEO of
Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, was also refused, even though the figures were 15 million dollar.
However, the more develope Facebook does, the more scandals it has. According to Thoai My
(2011), one of the most remarkable events is the case which occurred in February, 2004, one
week after Facebook being founded. There were three Havard students who accused Mr
Zuckerburg of stealing their ideas. Seriously, if these three people had won this case, he would
have lost proprietary rights to Facebook and could have been sentenced to a few years
imprisonment. The case last for years, eventually Mr Zuckerburg accepted to pay a
compensation of 65 million dollars.
It is not by chance that Facebook attracts such a lot of users. Facebook contains a number
of noticeable and convenient features. It only takes users a few minutes to set up an account by
filling their information and confirm it. Facebook friends can see all of each others Facebook,
including walls, status, profiles, or photographs. Besides, users are able to chat with their friends
on one-to-one, or with groups, share new photos, videos, stories, complaints, etc. Indeed,
Facebook contributes to creating a potential environment where people from all over the world
can communicate, make friends, exchange information. It is also a link which brings everybody
together despite different nationalities, races, colours, education and so on.

FACEBOOK TO VIETNAMESE STUDENTS 5
Literature Review
In 2004, Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook in order to help Harvard students store files
and communicate with each other easily, but a lot of achievements that Facebook has gained
today go beyond his expectations. Nowadays Facebook is considered to be the social network
site of students. They use it in their free time to update the latest events happening everyday.
However, it also means Facebook is having a big influence in their lives. That is the reason why
many researchers have made studies of Facebooks effects on them in recent years. In a well-
known research, Hui-Tzu Grace and Nicholas Edge (2012), sociologists at Utah Valley
University, asked 452 students who usually use Facebook to collect their opinions on fairness in
life. These two sociologists found out that the amount of time students used Facebook is directly
proportional to their pessimistic attitude to life. This discovery marked a new step forward
studying of Facebooks effect on students, yet Hui-Tzu and Nicholas could not explain the
reasons that made teenagers have a pessimistic view of life due to Facebook. Later, in March,
nine researchers from Gothenburg Research Institute surveyed more than one thousand students
in order to study the influence of using Facebook on self-respect and health. Interestingly, they
discovered a close connection between Facebook usage and self-respect. In other words,
spending more time on Facebook makes students have more negative thoughts, but the level
depends on living situation of each person (Chenda Ngak, 2012).
It can be seen that researchers tend to focus on studying Facebooks psychological effects
on students. Therefore, this report is to show both aspects mental and physical Facebook affects,
as well as give some typical solutions to its negative effects.

FACEBOOK TO VIETNAMESE STUDENTS 6
Methodology
Participants
The participants for this report were one hundred students set up an account on Facebook
and Mezing. Both of them are two social network sites that attract the majority of undergraduates
in Viet Nam ranging in age from 18 to 22. The number 100 was chosen because it was
reasonable to analyze. Therefore, the result would also be practical and precise. This survey last
one week from 6
th
to 13rd June, 2012.
Method and Procedure
The questionnaire was built up to investigate the use of Facebook on different purposes.
It was developed based on two researches, which were refered to in Literature Review in order to
find out Facebooks impact on young people, including positive and negative sides.
The questionnaire was made by an online survey tool which is at
http://www.surveytool.com and posted on Facebook account and Mezing accounts.
Procedure
The participants had to answer all the questions by clicking on the choices and typing the
answer. Their answers were sent to e-mail address. After all receiving 100 e-mails, the result was
made according to the answers by calculating and then the figures were expressed as percentage.




FACEBOOK TO VIETNAMESE STUDENTS 7
Results
All the charts below were designed to serve two main purposes. First, they help to reveal
the popularity of Facebook in Vietnam. Second, they provide specific data so that people partly
can determine Facebooks effect level on Vietnamese students.
Figure 1: What kinds of social network do you use?

The bar chart shows kinds of social network young people usually use. It can be seen that there
was a big difference in user rate between Facebook and other social network sites. More than
ninety out of one hundred respondents had Facebook accounts. Besides, ZingMe was also
popular with twenty-eight percent of participants who often use. The most third popular was
Blog Y! with thirteen percent. Twitter, My Space, and other social network sites such as Tumblr,
Hi5 were interested by less people with no more than twenty users. The data reveals that
Facebook attracts the greatest number of youngster today, even though it was launched a short
time ago
96%
9%
28%
13%
3%
4%
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% 120%
Facebook
Twitter
ZingMe
Blog Y!
My Space
Others
FACEBOOK TO VIETNAMESE STUDENTS 8
Figure 2: How often do you access Facebook?

The pie chart provides information about the frequency of accessing Facebook of young
people. Ninety percent of respondents log in Facebook everyday, whereas people who access
Facebook from three or four times a week and less than three times share the same percent (5%).







90%
5%
5%
Everyday
From 3 to 4 times a week
Less than 3 times
FACEBOOK TO VIETNAMESE STUDENTS 9
Figure 3: How many hours do you spend on Facebook per day?

Access hours Average hours Number of people Rate
< 1 hour 0 17 17%
From 1 to 4 hours 2,5 53 53%
From 4 to 8 hours 6 15 15%
>8 hours 10 15 15%

M =

= 3.725 (hours)
The bar chart shows amount of time young people spend using Facebook daily. Nearly
one-fifth percent of respondents use Facebook more than 8 hours per day. They spend at average
time (M) of 3.7 hours a day taking part in Facebooks activities such as: changing status, writing
notes, posting new photographs, commenting statuses of other people, etc.
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
< 1 hour From 1 to 4 hours From 4 to 8 hours > 8 hours
17%
53%
15% 15%
FACEBOOK TO VIETNAMESE STUDENTS 10

Figure 4: How many Facebook friends do you have?

Facebook friends Average friends Number of people
< 100 50 9
From 100 to 500 300 58
>500 600 33

M =

=377 (friends)
The bar chart shows the number of Facebook friends that students have. It can be seen that more
than a half of respondents make friend with other people ranging in quantity from 100 to 500,
whereas approximate one-third of them have more than 500 friends. There are only 9 people who
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%
< 100
From 100 to 500
> 500
9%
58%
33%
FACEBOOK TO VIETNAMESE STUDENTS 11
have less than 100 Facebook friends. Averagely, each student has about 377 friends on
Facebook. That is not a small number, especially when they do not know all of their Facebook
friends in real life. The data also reveals that it will become a serious problem whether students
make friends unconsciously on Facebook today.
Discussion
The purpose of this report is to explore Facebooks popurlarity and its impacts on
students. Using the survey data collected from one hundred volunteer participants ranging in age
from eighteen to twenty-two, I predicted that there were close relationships between Facebook
and users psychology, health and study. These results demonstrate that Facebook plays a big
role in students lives, as well as to some extent it affects their personal life. To examine on
which level Facebook is popular with students, I put Facebook usage and other social network
site usage in comparision, and investigated the frequency students accessed and used Facebook.
These were described through three graphs in Figure 1, 2 and 3. Interestingly, I found that the
number of students who used Facebook was twice as much as ones who used other social
network such as Twitter, My Space, ZingMe, Blog Y!, etc. In addition, about nine in ten students
accessed Facebook daily with the average time of nearly four hours. Accessing Facebook seems
to become a students habit nowadays. They update photos, set new status, and even simply log
in without doing anything. This can be easy to understand because there is not only one way for
students to access Facebook. Apart from PC (personal computers) and laptop, they are able to
use Facebook by mobile phone or Ipad, which has much smaller size than the formers. However,
if people look at these results closely, it will not difficult to see that this data is totally reasonable
when Facebook has been developing rapidly in recent years. According to Nicole B. Ellison,
Charles Steinfield and Cliff Lampe (2007), by 2007 Facebook had more than 21 million active
FACEBOOK TO VIETNAMESE STUDENTS 12
users creating over one billion page views each day. Morever, as of November 2006,
approximately 22000 organizations had Facebook directories, and more than 2000 American
colleges used it as the main site. Statistics also showed that Facebook was the seventh most
popular site on World Wide Web in that year. By the end of February 2012, there have been
approximately 845 million people all over the world using this social network site with one
billion pieces of content like photos, videos, web links, news, stories, etc sharing daily (Dang
Nhan, 2012)..
The figure of Facebook usage in this research is having a tendency to increase quickly in
the next few years. That makes people worry whether it can affect and how it affects them,
especially youngsters who count for over 60% of Facebook active user. Any scientific product
has two sides, which are positive and negative, and Facebook is not an exception. Firstly,
Facebook is created to help students in some aspects of their lives. They can find a wealth of
reliable information on Facebook, and use it to broaden their knowledge. Moreover, students
who are hard working also have chance to make friends having the same interest as them by
setting up a studying group. Thanks to it, they establish more relationships, as well as improve
communication skills. Students can even chat with strangers on Facebook openly; make friends
without worrying about the distance, race or gender. Another important strong point of Facebook
is boosting students self-confidence. Ashley Day (2011) showed that young people felt better
after they updated their Facebook profiles, commented their friends statuses. Similarly, people
who had low self-esteem levels but accessed Facebook frequently felt happier and more
connected with their friends. Especially, for shy students who often feel uncomfortable chatting
face to face, Facebook helps them stamp out shyness and loneliness. Obviously, the appearance
of Facebook has made a trend that has changed both of students lifestyle and communication
FACEBOOK TO VIETNAMESE STUDENTS 13
method. It creates favorable conditions for students to share their feelings, thoughts, conception,
as well as show their abilities freely.
According to my survey about the topic Facebook to Vietnamese students, I discovered
that now Facebook has influenced strongly on students instead of televisions or magazines. They
attach as much importance to their images built on Facebook as themselves in family and
society. According to Chenda Ngak (2012), Facebook nowadays becomes an indispensable part
of students lives; even it has the same position as family, friends or money. The question is
Does Facebook have negative effects on them? Firstly, it causes the decrease in study results.
This conclusion seems to be against the ideas that believe that peoples brain will develop much
better if it contacts with technology tools a lot (Trng Cm, 2010). The distraction and loss of
concentration on studying when they are on Facebook lead to the limitation to studys effectivity.
Sao Linh (2011) showed that students who take part in Facebooks activities get worse study
results than others do with the rate of twenty percent. For example, students mood can be
influenced easily by comments from viewers on his status. He wonders why those viewers
comment like that and how to reply as well. These thoughts take a lot of time; as a result, he
cannot concentrate on doing his homework.
Since the concept Facebook was popular with students, many people have worried that
sharing online life is shortening and damaging common communication in modern society
despite the fact that Facebook or other social network sites is considered to be a mirror reflecting
relationships, helping people make friends, chat with everyone. When students spend a wealth of
time sending messages and setting status, they lose time standing by their relatives and giving
love sentences automatically. Lng Nguyn (2010) argued that Facebook made distance among
people longer. Although Facebook helps people find old friends after a long time and is special
FACEBOOK TO VIETNAMESE STUDENTS 14
tool to connect them to hundreds of new friends, he believes that this distance is getting longer
and longer. For instance, people do not have to worry about remembering birthdays of anyone
because Facebook will remind them one day before their friends birthday. The only thing they
have to do is sending happy birthday comments.
My results showed that more than a half of students spend from one to four hours per day
taking part in Facebooks activities. This affects their health seriously. According to Ashley Day
(2011), spending too much time on Facebook makes students feel depressed and get eating
disorder. Indeed, the more time students spend on Facebook, the more communication skills they
lack. As a result, they block themselves from everyone and build up online low-quality
friendships. Morever, looking at screen of mobile phones or laptops, which is light constantly
can cause amplyopia and myalgia, even shorten life-span.
There are many advantages that the development of Facebook brings to people, but
Facebook itself also provides tools to prevent them. In fact, commenting status, photos, and
videos can influence on their ego. The findings from the research of Harvey Jones and Jose
Hiram Soltren (2005) demonstrated that students lives are violated too much, but they could not
find any solution to restrict this. Barrack Obama, the President of United States, warned students
about privacy on Facebook in the future (Diu Minh, 2009). He told students to be careful if they
wanted to post their information on Facebook because there were a lot of companies which used
Facebook to investigate candidates. Any unsuitable photo, habit such as drink alcohol, smoke
cigarette, etc can make them lose a good job. So, do they obtain more or lose more when their
private lives are shared more and more?

FACEBOOK TO VIETNAMESE STUDENTS 15
Conclusion
Strong points that Facebook brings are undeniable. Nevertheless, weak points still exist.
Therefore, management, instruction, advisory and orientation are necessary, along with the
development of Facebook. In Viet Nam, government has cooperated with the Ministry of
Information and Communications in preventing users from accessing Facebook. However, it is
not successful because young people know very clearly about tricks to escape from this
prevention. Thus, I suggest three recommendations to this problem. Firstly, students need to
manage the number of Facebook friends more closely. My survey results showed that three-forth
of participants did not know all of their Facebook friends in real life. They accept any invitation,
which is shown on Facebook without caring whether they know those people or not. In many
cases, this can lead to a lot of unpredictable consequences. Secondly, students should be careful
with what they want to say on Facebook. When students have hundreds, even thousands of
Facebook friends, that also means those friends come from different places, with different jobs,
characteristics, religions and so on. Setting new status probably do not affect students a lot, but
for other people, they will receive that status at different angles. For example, student share a
song or video of a singer and he gives the criticism about him/her. Unfortunately, some people in
his friend list on Facebook are fans of that singer. When seeing the status, they will think that he
does not respect their idol. The arguments are unavoidable and they will take him a lot of time.
Finally, students should arrange time logically. In other words, students should give themselves
requirements or limitations about time whenever they are on Facebook. Besides, they should also
spend more time taking part in outdoor activities such as meeting, going shopping, playing
sports, hanging out with friends, etc. Keeping balance between studying and entertaining is
essential for students to have a healthy life.
FACEBOOK TO VIETNAMESE STUDENTS 16

References
Anna Collier & Larry Magid (2012) A parents guide to Facebook , Revised 2012 Edition,
ConnectSafely: Smart Socializing Starts Here www.connectsafely.org/pdfs/fbparents.pdf
[accessed 9 June 2012]
Ashley Day (2011) The Facebook Effect: Good or Bad for Your Health? Everyday Health
http://www.everydayhealth.com/healthy-living/ [accessed 9 June 2012]
Doug Fodeman & Marje Monroe (2009) The impact of Facebook on other students National
Association of Independent Schools: Resourses & Statistics
http://www.nais.org/resources/ [accessed 10 June 2012]
Harvey Jones & Jos Hiram Soltren (2005) Facebook: Threats to Privacy, 1
st
ed.
groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/facebook.pdf [accessed 9 June, 2012]
Nicole B. Ellison, Charles Steinfield & Cliff Lampe (2007) The Benefits of Facebook
Friends: Social Capital and College Students Use of Online Social Network Sites
Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication
msu.edu/~nellison/Steinfield_Ellison_Lampe(2008).pdf [accessed 11 June 2012]
Randall Stross (2009) When everyones a friend, is anything private? New York Times:
Business http://www.nytimes.com/pages/business/ [accessed 11 June 2012]
Rebecca R. Ruiz (2011) Facebooks Impact on Student Grades The New York Times:
Education http://www.nytimes.com/pages/education/ [accessed 9 June 2012]
FACEBOOK TO VIETNAMESE STUDENTS 17
Sao Linh (2011) Facebook nh hng xu n hc tp ca teen Bo Mi
http://www.baomoi.com/ [accessed 9 June 2012]
Sverre Ole Dronen (2012) New Research obout Facebook Addiction University of Bergen:
News http://www.uib.no/news/ [accessed 11 June 2012]
Thoi M (2011) Nhng iu bn nn bit v Facebook Ngi a tin
http://www.nguoiduatin.vn/ [accessed 9 June 2012]
Appendix
Questionnaire
1. How often do you access Facebook?
a. Everyday (90%)
b. 3 4 times a week (5%)
c. Less than 3 times (5%)
2. How many hours do you spend on Facebook per day?
a. Less than one hour (17%)
b. From 1 to 4 hours (53%)
c. From 4 to 8 hours (15%)
d. More than 8 hours (15%)
3. How frequently do you participate in Facebook activities?
a. Very frequently (7%)
b. Somewhat frequently (22%)
c. Sometimes (36%)
d. Rarely (31%)
e. Never (4%)
FACEBOOK TO VIETNAMESE STUDENTS 18
4. How do you access Facebook?
a. Laptop (40%)
b. Pc (18%)
c. Mobile phones (42%)
5. Which Facebook features do you use?
a. Updating stts, videos, photos
b. Gaming
c. Business
d. Advertising
e. Others
6. What kinds of social network sites do you use?
a. Facebook
b. Mezing
c. Twitter
d. Blog Yahoo!
e. Others
7. Why do you use Facebook?
a. Expanding relationships
b. Using as archive
c. Commenting
d. Following the trend
e. Others
8. What do you think about Facebook?
a. Convenient (40%)
FACEBOOK TO VIETNAMESE STUDENTS 19
b. Waste of time (34%)
c. Neutral (have or not is ok) (26%)
9. Have you ever tried to give up Facebook?
a. Yes (57%)
b. No (43%)
10. How do you feel when you dont access Facebook for a week?
a. Uncomfortable, nervous (36%)
b. Comfortable (14%)
c. Normal (50%)
11. How many Facebook friends do you have?
a. Less than 100 (9%)
b. From 100 to 500 (58%)
c. More than 500 (33%)
12. In all of your Facebook friends, how many people do you know in real life?
a. All of friend list (27%)
b. Half of friend list (47%)
c. One third of friend list, even less (26%)
13. Have you ever forgotten doing homework due to Facebook?
a. Yes (53%)
b. No (47%)
14. Do you think you are addicted to Facebook?
a. Yes (59%)
b. No (41%)