This research question interests me because most people think of social media as a common thing, and fail to realize how it has changed our generation already.  This research question affects me because we are living in the social media age, so we are witness to the abilities social media possess in every aspect of our day to day lives.  I am a user of social networks at least once throughout the day.  Most people cannot go more than an hour without logging into and checking up on their Facebook or Instagram at least once.  I am qualified to write about this question because I have personally experienced changes caused by social, from the way we communicate to how we receive information. For these reasons, I have my own thoughts about the changes it has caused.  I can research others who have similar and contradicting ideas to that of mine, backing up and helping prove my point of how social media will change future generations.

In my first source, the author claims that social media has permanently changed the way we communicate, and how future generations will communicate.  The author chooses to focus on the benefits and shine light on the consequences of the change caused by social media.  A major pro the article makes is how social media has made the world smaller by globalizing peoples' voices.  However it also shows how some people just want to grab attention to themselves with no real intent to act on important issues.  Because of the authors past experience, he tends to focus on the pros mainly, not giving many reasons for not having social media. The author has a background in internet marketing, with 20 years of business experience.  For these reasons, he is a credible source because he has used social media to help make his business more well known, and with his 20 years of experience he has been witness to the change social media has caused, with its creation coming in the last 15 years.

In the second source, the author claims that the amount of users on social network is increasing at an astonishing rate, and that social networking is here to stay and not a passing trend.  This claim is backed up with a graphical representation of the growth of the amount of user on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others.  These graphs are helpful to my assignment by better illustrating the wide reach that social media has gained in such a relatively short amount of time.  This wide reach displays how much more efficient social networks are at getting information to more people quicker.  This article is a credible source because the author has a background in journalism, so they have experience with researching and know, from firsthand, the benefits that social media can be for research.  

For the last source so far, the article contains information regarding the influence of social media and how governments in Central Asia try and censor the allowable information on social networks.  One of the major points the article makes is why governments in Central Asia do censor social networks.  It is because some of the information that social networks provide can spark changes in the mindsets of their citizens.  These changes could lead to the demand for reform of government policy from the people.  The ability of social networks to spread a simple idea so quickly, and to large population, is why some governments wish to control it.  The author of this source, being a news reporter in Central Asia, must have personally seen how her government has change the news she has originally intended to report on before.  This gives her primary knowledge of why their governments would want to censor social media outlet.

All of these sources so far show this is a feasible research question to base this assignment on.  This question is arguable because there is more than one answer to it, so many people will a different answer, and different reasons for thinking that way.  This puts them on different sides of the argument.  The sources do not really disagree on many points, but they do build upon one another.  The first source starts by showing all the benefits that are gained by using social media outlets, with mainly irrelevant problematic issues. Then the second one shows of the immense range social networks have stretched providing communication between, and information to their users.  Finally the third source shows a current example of major points from both the other sources.  This example displays the power social media has to influence masses of people, with governments in Central Asia currently censoring the information social networks are allowed to supply on their sites.  My own thoughts on this issue, is that social media will cause future generations to become even more omniscient about issues going on all around the world globally, causing more people to become aware of others situation and wanting to help them in any way they can.  I can revise this question by taking an angle that focuses more on real life examples of social media influence, and arguing against opposing views on my own claims.

