THE INFLUENCES OF FACEBOOK ON VIETNAMESE TEENAGES

Website: Email : Tel : 0918.775.368
National Economics University
International Bachelor Degree Program,
Faculty of International Education
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Research Project
THE INFLUENCES OF FACEBOOK ON
VIETNAMESE TEENAGES

Group: 2

Members: Nguyễn Hà Mai Hương
Trần Thị Phương Linh
Lương Phương Thảo
Huỳnh Thế Lợi

Teacher: Ms. PHẠM PHƯƠNG LAN

Hà Nội -2010
Website: Email : Tel : 0918.775.368
Contents
Contents....................................................................................................................2
I. Introduction..........................................................................................................3
II. Major findings....................................................................................................7
1. Using Facebook among Vietnamese teenagers............................................................................7
a. Their time spent on surfing Facebook......................................................................................7
b. The most often activities Vietnamese teenagers do when using Facebook............................8
2. The influences of Facebook on Vietnamese teenagers................................................................9
b. The bad influences:.................................................................................................................11
III. Conclusion.......................................................................................................12
2. Suggestion...................................................................................................................................12

IV. APPENDIX......................................................................................................14
1. Questionnaire:....................................................................................................14
Website: Email : Tel : 0918.775.368
I. Introduction
1. Background:
Life is becoming more and more modern. The development of technology inventing helps people a
lot in their work and study. Furthermore, it gives people many kinds of means for relax and
entertain. In recent years, a trend of using social network is booming among teenagers and the
most famous is Facebook. Facebook is a social networking website launched in February 2004 and
operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. It has many functions such as playing games,
chatting, sharing pictures or websites and so on. As a result, many teenagers in the world are being
attracted by Facebook. According to 2009, Dan Tri, the number of Vietnamese teenagers who use
Facebook is approximately 400,000 accounts – about 2/1000 Facebook users all over the world.
On the other hand, some people do not want this social network become more popular, especially,
the government because they believed that Facebook would be the best method to hand bad
information. Therefore, using Facebook has some advantages and also disadvantages. In this
research, we are going to study about the influences of Facebook on teenagers who have cognitive,
emotional and attitudinal changes.
2. Rationale of the study:
The information technology is developing faster and faster. Many people use private blog to share
their emotion and to contact with their friend. Facebook is one of the famous private blog in the
world. Facebook has been popular all over the world for a long time but in Viet Nam, it has been
popular with Vietnamese teenagers for 2 years after 360blog closed. It became a wave in short
time. It is believed quite useful and simple to use. Many people think that Facebook is one the part
of their life, so we want to find down: “what is really situation in Vietnam? How many time people
use Facebook per day? Do they really like it? “Through people who use Facebook, we want to find
the advantage and disadvantage of Facebook. And what is influence of Facebook to people, special
young people. With the questionnaire and discussing, we hope that we can give you some
suggestion to use Facebook easier.
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3. Research questions:
• How is the state of using Facebook among Vietnamese teenagers
• What are the influences of Facebook on teenagers? ( Advantage and Disadvantage)
• What are solutions to make Vietnamese teenagers use Facebook effetely?
4. Research methods:
According to the research questions, firstly, we designed the questionnaire with purposes study
about the state of using Facebook among Vietnamese teenagers, the advantages as well as the
disadvantages of Facebook on Vietnamese teenagers by multiple-choice questions and opening
questions. Then, the questionnaires were distributes to 55 students from National Economics
University and some other teenagers, but we just got back 44 ones. After that, we totalized and
analyzed the figures to get primary data. Beside the primary date, we also used secondary date
(TV, newspapers,..) to collect information. Finally, we wrote report based on the figures we
obtained.
5. Literature review:
Facebook “Improves social skills”
According to the research of the Cambridge University, Facebook can encourage users to be more
social instead of less social.
Researchers found out that Facebook gave people more choice to contact with their relationships
and was “a way of storing biography and enhancing social memory”. They can track people who
they like or find out what ex-partners were up to.
Users also used it to keep in touch with old friends who they might lose contact with. They can do
that by logging on to Facebook to take information from profiles and pictures. That way is easier
than a phone call or letter.
As a result, people can associate at a fundamental level, meaning former relationships and
associations can be revived.
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Slander and revilement another on Facebook
Nowadays, Facebook becomes more and more popular with many young people in Viet Nam.
Facebook also brings to us many negative and benefit. Some people said: If they could not log in

Facebook every day, they feel uncomfortable and they love Facebook so much. It is the place
which they share their feeling. Some people use this to slander or revile another people. In the real
life, they are quite silent and mild but on Facebook they show another character. They slander,
revile, and even curse other people. Because they use “tag”, so many people know the note
immediately. Of course, who was slandered, know the note. The argument was started. One
Facebook, many people fake someone else. They fake the famous person, or someone they hate.
They make them like the really Facebook of person whom they fake by posting pictures, writing
note…… and after that, they sully another person and make them feel angry with person who was
faked. Many bad situations happened. The victim uses many ways to find down who is the
instigator. This brings many troubles for the victim and the instigator. Maybe because of this joke,
friends can change to enemy.
(Source:)
Two risks of facebook
Facebook, which is used in all over the world, has a lot of gaps that almost people don’t care. The
report of International Christian Chamber of Commerce (ICCC) said that many people were
victims (include teenager) swindled on the internet and total costs of their losses come to $559
million in 2009, increased to 110% from the last year. In April 2010, the defense’s experts of
VeriSign Company said that a hacker American, who had ever appropriated 1, 5 million accounts
in Facebook successfully, had bought username and password in some forums with the cost from
25 to 45 USD per account. To solve this problem experts show us two risks warning about the
insaneness of Facebook. First, Private information is exploited as much as possible. Recently,
Facebook provides a new application whose name is Open Graph, makes private information share
faster and variedly. That is an action of company tending to advertisers helps them to find a lot of
information about enjoyment, private problems that are being argued and so on. However, that is
way for hacker who can break into everyone’s account easily. Second, Facebook is set up privacy
in unsafe condition when it is redesigned. Every year, Facebook usually changes, upgrades some
interfaces and features of website at least 2-3 times. At that time, Facebook moves user’s
established privacy to default format automatically, it means that all private information is
appeared.
(Source: www.vnexpress.net)

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Facebook takes the most influences on teengirls
According to 2010, Bingo –a writer on BBC, instead of TV and magazine, Facebook has the
strongest influences on teengirls now. Their life is being affected by one of the biggest social
networks in the world. When they were asked for three things important in life, 60% of teengirls
under 15 years old said that: family, friends and Facebook. Even more than 41% of teengirls
consider that Facebook is more important than family and friends. However, there are only 6% of
teenboys agree with it. This research shows the important of Facebook on teenagers, especially on
teengirls. Some parents were surprised by this figure because they do not believe that technologies
can intervene in life of young people like this. It is obvious that Facebook has many good effects
on people in general and on teenagers in particular. It makes people relax and feel comfortable by
sharing their emotional that they cannot tell their parents or anyone else. In addition, they can
make friends and widen their knowledge about the world. However, from this research there are a
large number of teengirls think the role of Facebook is equal to their family and friends. Therefore,
in this case teenagers spend their time in “virtual life” more than real life; the problem for parents
deal with is catching up the trend of their daughter and should spend more time for them.
(Source: BBC news channel).
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II. Major findings
1. Using Facebook among Vietnamese teenagers
First of all, this research will get information from teenagers such as things they do when they use
Facebook and the amount of time they spend on surfing Facebook.
a. Their time spent on surfing Facebook.
As the development of communication medium, teenagers get many great opportunities to make
friends, find information, play games, and listen to music and so on. In recent years, a trend of
using social network is booming among Vietnamese teenagers and the most famous is Facebook.
According to my survey which conducted among students from National Economics University
and some other teenagers that I met on the streets, about 57% of them said that they will not
survive without Facebook, 32% thought Facebook is quite important but it have the same role as
TV and Internet and the rest 11% do not really care about it. In the fact, we do not suspect the role

of Facebook among teenagers as it has many function better than other social network. However,
this number about the proportion of teenagers love Facebook is quite surprising. On the other hand,
we can see clearly the influence of Facebook throughout the next figure. Being asked how many
times they spend on Facebook each day approximately 59% of the respondents answered that they
spend from 1-3 hours per day, 27% spend above 3 hours per day and the rest 14% spend per day. It
means that the influences of Facebook on teenagers are not small and unavoidable. We can see the
percentage clearer from the chart below: