Due to the fact that social media has completely changed the way in which many companies operate, not to mention how we communicate with friends, family, colleagues and our favorite brands, recent findings unveiled from public relations company Maverick Indonesia in cooperation with Paramadina University may not be that surprising to many.

In fact, according to the survey, within Indonesia specifically, 84 percent of journalists claim that who they decide to interview depends upon how strong the stories are within the social media space. Additionally, almost 60 percent of the nearly 365 journalists who participated in the survey sometimes are “intrigued” enough by comments they see on various social networking websites that they are then prompted to take the steps needed to speak with the people being highlighted.

Surveying those in the journalism industry throughout areas including Sumatra, Java, Bali, Nusa Tenggara, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Ambon and Papua, reports reveal that although 78 percent of all respondents still look to mainstream media, they were also pretty significantly influenced by social media mega sites such as Facebook, Twitter (News - Alert) and blogs throughout the news writing process.

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“Journalists need to interview citizens to get comments on a particular issue. Now, citizens speak their minds through social media without being asked to. They speak about floods and traffic jams. So it’s okay to quote their comments,” AJI Chairman Eko Markyadi said in a statement.

One potential downside of attempting to write a story based on the popularity of the topic of social networks is a pretty obvious one—not everything circulating on the Internet is 100-percent accurate. Thus, journalists must still do their due diligence to ensure the facts behind a topic are actually the facts.

In other social media news, just yesterday, May 22, research from the Pew Research Center showed that Twitter is now the go-to social media website for U.S. teenagers since Facebook (News - Alert) has “too many adults” using it for their liking.

 "The key is that there are fewer adults, fewer parents and just simply less complexity," commented Amanda Lenhart of the Pew (News - Alert) Research Center, one of the study's authors. "They still have their Facebook profiles, but they spend less time on them and move to places like Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr."

Some key points of the study are:

• 94 percent of teens are Facebook users. This figure shows no growth from the previous year.
• 26 percent of respondents in this age group are Twitter users, a number that has doubled from 2011.
• 60 percent of those polled allow for their tweets to be made public, while a quarter of these adolescents only produce private tweets and 12 percent have no idea if their tweets are public or private.
• Over 90 percent of teen social media users have posted a picture of themselves, a percentage that has grown from 79 percent back in 2006.

While social media get be a great thing in terms of exposure and finding out information quickly, how much exposure is too much must be decided by each individual on their own accord.