International Journal of Technology Diffusion, 6(1), 61-75, January-March 2015 61
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ABSTRACT
Social networks are virtual communication sites that allow its participants to connect, building relationships,
and collaborate on social issues. It became part of our lives and spread rapidly among youth. Young people
join these sites to keep strong relationships with friends and to make new ones. Therefore, it is important to
investigate the factors that inluence the intention to use social networking sites (SNSs) to gain better position
in the social reform among young people. This study developed an integrated theoretical model which has ive
major factors that predict the intention to use SNSs. An empirical test was conducted, where a sample of 302
university students and an instrument containing 27 items was used. The results provide consistent evidence
that all hypothesized positive associations exist except for the isolation variable. After taking into account
different demographic and attitudinal variables, Facebook use still predicted respondents’ social reform. The
future work might focus on a speciic context such as the effects of using social networks on education, and
focus on students’ environment in education and the inluence of social network. Detailed results, conclusions
and future work are stated in later sections.
The Role of Social
Networking in the Social
Reform of Young Society
Emad Abu-Shanab, Yarmouk University, Irbid, Jordan
Mushera Frehat, Al-Qassim University, Al-Qassim, Saudi Arabia
Keywords: Social Networking Sites, Social Reform, Technology Adoption, Young Society
1. INTRODUCTION
In the current era, the social networking or
“social media” like Facebook, and Twitter has
become part of our lives especially young stu-
dents. It is like one of the information media as
television, newspaper, and radio but it is more
than sharing information it has facilitated the
creation and exchange of ideas quickly and
widely than other media. Social networking sites
are the most popular Internet communication
forms among teenagers and young adults. It’s
a virtual communication that enables its users
to make/ view public or semi-public profiles
(Subrahmanyam et al., 2008). The biggest
motivation to young people is to keep strong
relationships with friends and to make a strong
relation with new acquaintances (Valenzuela,
Park & Kee, 2009).
DOI: 10.4018/IJTD.2015010104