MRM

Internet is popular among teenagers in KDU.

Abstract

Internet is becoming increasingly popular among teenagers in KDU College Penang. Connecting to the internet connects every computer in the world to your monitor screen have stormed most teenagers to stick on the net. Technology has becoming further affordable and within budget range teenagers easily owns a computer. In this research, I will be exploring all the factors that have made internet popular among teenagers in KDU College Penang. Survey questionnaires will be giving out to our targeted audience of age 18-21 to identify the factors that appeals to internet.

Introduction

The term ‘internet’ is a worldwide system of computer, which provides information from computer to computer. The computer, which connects to the internet, is part of a network. Internet has become popular among teens in year 2000. Researches back in 2005 shows that 87% of United State teens age 12 and above use the internet. Research has shown that nearly nine upon ten teens are internet users. The vast majority teen’s uses the internet for instant messaging such as MSN messenger, Yahoo! messenger, Skype, ICQ and e-messenger. At the same time, teen is addicted to online gaming, blogging, getting news and seeking health information.

Internet Explorer for personal computer or Safari for Macintosh, teens can browse for anything they want. Internet is very easy to use, by just typing on any subject; result will pop out with no hassle. Teen uses internet to search just about anything that came across their mind. Internet is a one-way ticket for most of the teens to learn more about things that they never came across. One of it would be online gaming such as Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG). Thousands and thousands of teenagers would stick to this type of game genre because it is highly addictive and consumes a lot of playing hour. World of Warcraft itself are a very popular MMORPG and a big success for Blizzard (Big time game company). With over hundred of thousands of player logged into the game everyday, most population comes from young teenagers and young adults.

Another important reason would be the technology has become cheaper by the months. Desktops and laptops have become much affordable and easily loan. Computers are now easily available, with PC Fair event going on every 4 months a year for 3 days. Using cash redemption, gifts and voucher has made this event successful. Everyone can connect to the internet. It became something vital and a must for everyone to purchase because nowadays we can connect to any part of the world through internet.

Other contributing factors would be free downloading from the internet such as music, videos, application, games and pirated copies, which are unlicensed. Internet has been a good thing and a bad thing when it comes to music industry. Using many available download software, teens can get artists tracks from the internet easily, public would buy original compact disc (CD) and converting them into mpeg-3 (mp3) format and upload it to the internet and available for free downloading to other internet users. It brings down the record sales for record companies worldwide. The culture is still strong until nowadays, alternatively free downloads has strongly influenced the teens around the world.

In our research, we would be exploring all the factors that have made internet popular among the teens in KDU College Penang. The purpose of doing this research is to look into the popularity of internet towards the society, mainly teenagers between the ages of 18 to 21. This title is significant since it is an issue that jumble up and conclude by mostly everyone, it will strongly conclude the perceptions of the society around us and is debated agitatedly by educator group, online gamer supporters, parent groups and the older generation. The results can be generalized as the impact affects the perception of the society.

Three hypotheses has been finalize in this research: first, Internet is popular because hardware and software is becoming cheaper and affordable; second, popularity of online gaming is very popular among teenager, therefore it contribute to positive progress on internet usage; third, Internet is encouraging free downloading of music, videos, software and pirated software (unlicensed). In this research, only one methods will be use—questionnaires. Fifty participants will be needed to run the questionnaire survey; while 30 volunteered subjects for the latter.

Literature Review

Internet has been around for years. It matures into influential benefits among its popularity of teenagers. The focus in this research is to find what is the most contributing factors that have made internet popular among teenagers. We included articles, reports to support the factors that relate to our topic.

This literature review show on how influential online gaming spread across countries and the impact it had make millions of teenager on internet.

‘‘81% of teen internet users plays online games. That represents about 17 million teens in the United State and signifies growth of 52% in the number of online gamers since 2000”

(http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Teens_Tech_July2005web.pdf)

“World of Warcraft has enjoyed global success and acclaim. It seemed natural that it would do well in America, where there was anticipation for a new Warcraft title. The truth though is that it has taken off everywhere it has been released. It has been a massive hit in Asia, Australia, Canada, and Europe, and has many international fans and subscribers. The game has a simple, universal appeal that transcends language barriers and geography..”(Source: Corwell, H. (November 2005) Who plays World of Warcraft . (http://www.world-of-warcraft-gold.com/who-plays-world-of-warcraft.html)

Also websites has become part of the idea where internet first started of was just browsing tool which allow you to jump from website to website. “Part of the beauty and power of the original Web lay in its simplicity: Web sites were made up of pages, each of which could contain text and images. Those pages were able to connect to other information on the Web through links. If you were maintaining a Web site about poodles and stumbled across a promising breeder’s home page, you could link to the information on that page by inserting a few simple lines of code. From that point on, your site was connected to that other page, and subsequent visitors to your site could follow that connection with a single mouse click. In some basic sense, those two pages of data were interacting with each other, but the exchange between them was rudimentary.”

(http://discovermagazine.com/2005/oct/emerging-technology)

Hypothesis

1) Internet is popular because hardware and software is becoming cheaper and affordable.

2) Popularity of online gaming is very popular among teenager therefore it contribute to positive progress on internet usage.

3) Internet is encouraging free downloading of music, videos, software and pirated software (unlicensed).

Methodology

The research will target to teenagers who are age of 18-21 to know how popular is internet based on their own opinion. By using the survey method by distributing questionnaire, it would safe cost saving and be able to get to our targeted audience effectively. Our target audience would be meeting with question that support why internet is popular. We will be sending out 50 questionnaires to the selected group of students on a particular day and collect it that day itself.