Social Media and Its Impact on College Students Identity

Abstract

Social media has brought about the diffusion and communication of various ideological trend by strengthening the interaction between people. The diversity and complexity of interaction undoubtedly aggravate the identity crisis. For contemporary college students in China, the recognition of the identity of college student will have an important impact on their future development into the society. This research explores the impact of social media use (frequency of use, information acquisition mode, motivation for use, information acquisition channel) on the identity (its cognitive, evaluation, and emotional dimensions) of Chinese college students by using a questionnaire survey. The findings demonstrate Chinese college students have a high degree of identification with college students, and the use of social media plays a significant part in shaping their identity. In addition, access to information is the primary motivation for using social media. Positive information acquisition mode affects their identity positively, while how often college students used social media had no such effect, and the motivation of obtaining information and the domestic official media can promote college students identity. Therefore, the domestic official media should make full use of its high reliability and high authority, meet the demand of college students in terms of communication content as well as improve the quality of content.