MENTAL HEALTH AND SOCIAL MEDIA ADDICTION OF SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN RELATION TO LOCALE DURING PANDEMIC COVID-19

Abstract

The present study was conducted with the main objectives to study the mental health and social media addiction among secondary students with respect to certain variable like gender locale (rural, urban) and also to find out the relationship between mental health and social media addiction. The data was collected by selecting randomly 156 secondary school students by using a self made questionnaire “Social Media Addiction questionnaire Student Form”- developed by Researcher and “Mental Health Battery” by A. K. Singh & Alpana Sengupta. The sample consisted of 53% students from rural schools and 47% students from urban schools. Descriptive research method was employed to carry out this quantitative research work. Normalization of data was done by using Histogram with normal probability curve. Descriptive Statistical technique like mean and standard deviation and inferential statistics like‘t’-test and correlation were used to analyze and interpret the data. All hypotheses were checked at the 0.05 level of significance. Result showed that significant differences of mental health exist rural and urban students (t=4.60, p=0.00) and significance differences of social media addiction exist between rural and urban students (t=2.62, p=0.009). Moreover, there exist a significant negative relationship (r= -0.769) between mental health and social media addiction. These finding will be helpful to aware about the use of social media and the better way to use social media for mentally healthy students. Present study offers to make insight in the social media user to eliminate the effect of addiction. Social media directly or indirectly affects the mental health of younger generation. These findings suggest that helping school students to gain a better understanding of the adverse effects of social media addiction.