Social media's role among Tujia Ethnic Minority teenagers in Guizhou (China)

Tian Qu

doi:10.18844/gjhss.v3i1.1777

Abstract

In this study, we explore the role of social media in Ethnic minority teenagersâ€™ lives, and describe their activities, using frequencies, time spending, and their parentsâ€™ attitudes toward social software. To this purpose we randomly chose 50 students (aged: 13-18) to participate, who are Tujia ethnic minority in Guizhou. To collect data we used questionnaire platform Sojump. Results show that mobile phone is the most frequent tool to use social media; the most used feature of social media is chatting; most teens use social media everyday, and occupy part of their studying time; and more than half parents regulte their childrenâ€™s social media using, and they worried about social media effect childrenâ€™s school marks.Keywords: Ethnic minority,social media, Tujia teenager, school performance, mobile media.

Highlights

There is an obvious gap in wealth between urban and rural areas in China (Wu & Liu, 2014)
H3.Parents worried about children’s social media using. To pursue this issue and provide up-to-date data, we explore the relationship between Tujia teenagers’ social media usage behavior and their learning performance
Most teenagers used social media every day, and 78% Tujia teens believed social media was a component in their daily lives

Summary

Introduction

There is an obvious gap in wealth between urban and rural areas in China (Wu & Liu, 2014). It is believed that the economic gap between urban and rural regions generates a knowledge and information gap (Jin, 2003). Urban youth generally own more devices such as computers and tablets, so they have more chance to access knowledge. Most ethnic minority youth live in rural areas. They have less audiovisual devices and know less or find out later about what is happening in the outside word. People in urban areas have limited channels to gain information from ethnic minority zones. Social media provides a User-Generated Content (UGC) platform to users and gives them more opportunities to participate and interact

Methods

Results

Conclusion