Social networking sites usage and psychological wellbeing: A survey among Telangana youth

Abstract

"Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication," said Marshall McLuhan in the 1960s, commenting on the influence of broadcasting medium; further, he adds that Innumerable confusions and a profound feeling of despair invariably emerge in periods of great technological and cultural transitions (McLuhan, 1967). India is going through such a transition in this Information age, especially after the jio effect (Ghosh, 2019), which has bought millions of online by providing free High speed 4G data for more than six months as an introductory offer to increase its subscribers, both urban and rural Indian youth were quick to take advantage of the offer as youth instinctively understood the present environment (McLuhan, 1967). As of August 2021, India is the second-largest online market in the world with over 749 million internet users, internet access and use largely vary in the country due to the socio-economic divide and the number of users varied greatly among the urban and rural population (keelery, 2021). 90% of the internet users in India are on social networking sites; most of them are between 18 to 24 years of age (Keelery, Number of social network users India 2015-2040, 2021).Passive browsing social networking sites (SNSs) correlates with poorer wellbeing (Verduyn, et al., 2015). However, less research is conducted that examined the impact of social networking usage on the psychological wellbeing of Indian youth and compared rural and urban social networking usage. For a diverse sample of college students (N = 629, Mage = 21, SDage = 46.2% female), for this study social networking usage is considered as the amount of time spent on SNSs in a day and how long they have been using SNSs (in years).while the amount of time sent on SNSs has an impact on rural Indian youth, how long they have been on SNSs has an impact on psychological wellbeing of the urban Indian youth and neither the amount of time or how long they are using SNSs has impacted the semi-urban Indian youth.