Use and impact of social networking sites amongst students

Abstract

Social Media plays an important role among students of higher educational institutions. Popularity of Social Networking Sites (SNS) has increased in these youth groups as they are considered the prevalent users of these sites. In the present study the author examines the type of social media platforms students commonly use, the amount of time students spend on social media, the purposes for which students use the social media and the impact of social media use on students’ social life. It could be observed from the study that 87.64% of the respondents are using WhatsApp frequently, 95.36% of the respondents are responded that they are using social media to stay in touch with friends and family, most of the male respondents engaged with social media more than 3 hours than female, the category of age 21-24 using social network more than 3 hours as compared with other age group. Most of the respondents who belong to urban areas are engaged with social networks more time than pupils from rural areas as the former spent more than 3 hours daily with SNS. A good number of students expressed that they tried to cut down time spent on social media but they failed to do so. About 45% of the respondents never felt or hardly felt stressed due to the use of social media, whereas the majority of the students feel that academic productivity suffers because of the extensive use of social media.