Impact of Social Media On Postgraduate Students and Young Working Personals

 This Survey was conducted on students and personals from Pakistan only.

INTRODUCTION

This study aimed at finding the trend of Average Screen Time Users spend on social media and how much it affects their overall well being and time management capability. For this purpose, a sample of Postgraduate students and Young Working personals aged between 20 -37 was taken. A questionnaire survey was administered to get the response from them. The questionnaire survey contained both open and close-ended questions. The responses show the statistics of screen time of people.

Screen Time usually refers to the time a person spends using digital screens like monitors, laptops, mobile phones and multimedia etc. Whereas, Social Media is a term used to define applications and sites that allow users to share their thoughts , ideas and information including all through virtual networks and communities. Social media is internet-based and gives users quick electronic communication of content, such as personal information, documents, videos, and photos.

BACKGROUND

Being in the age of technology everybody is accustomed to using digital devices to get their usual work done. Covid-19 has given rise to the use of digital devices and average screen time of users, especially young students and working personnel.

In a reidhealth.org Blog about ‘healthy amount of screen time for adults’, It is mentioned that adults should limit screen time outside of work to less than two hours per day. Any time beyond that which you would typically spend on screens should instead be spent participating in physical activity.

Those spending six hours or more per day watching screens had a higher risk for depression. Screen time more than 8.5–10 hours causes Insomnia and Poor Sleep, Eye Strain and Headaches, Neck, Shoulder and Back Pain, Changes in Cognition etc.

https://www.reidhealth.org › blog › screen-time-for-adults

OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

Keeping the gap in assessing the use of social media among young students/professionals in view, this study aims at:

• To find out the screen time and usage of social media among target audience.
• To explore their views about impacts that social media usage and screen time creates on their well-being and everyday time management.

MATERIALS

1. Google Forms : The study is based on a questionnaire survey. We used Google Forms to make questionnaires containing both open and close-ended questions to distribute among the students.
2. Ms Excel : It was used to clean the data and perform multiple regression test
3. Minitab : Gathered responses were analyzed with the help of Minitab Software. Mini-tab was used to perform normality , proportion and mean tests on data where required.

QUESTIONNAIRE

Following are the relevant set of questions we asked from our target audience to conduct our study.

1 — Name

2 — Age

3 — Gender

4 — What is your average screen time per day (including study and work screen time)?

5 — How much free time do you get each day?

6 — How much time do you spend on social media per day?

7 — Average time on social media

8 — Which device do you usually use to access social media sites?

9 — Which social media app consumes most of your time?

10 — Do you think social media sites bring a bad impact on your overall well-being and everyday time management?

11 — How much do you think social media invades your privacy? Rate 1–5.

DATASET

Survey was distributed to 1000 people and 600 responses were received back from users aged between 21–37. Responses data set images are attached below.

Responses show that 300 persons which made up to 50% of the data set are not enrolled in masters whereas the remaining persons are enrolled in different postgrad disciplines.

Dataset also shows that 50% of the responses received were from Female Postgrad Students and Working Personals and 50% were from Male Postgrad Students and Working Personals.

AVERAGE DAILY SCREEN TIME OF USERS

Dataset shows that 46.6% of users have an average screen time of more than 10 hours per day. Whereas 31.7% of users have daily screen time between 5–10 hours and only 21% of users have less than 5 hours of average daily Screen time.

To check the significance of our null hypothesis ‘Screen Time > 10 hours for 46% users’, we performed a one-proportion test. The test shows a p-value > 0.05 which means we can not reject the hypothesis that almost 46% of users have more than 10 hours of average daily screen time. Whereas, the hypothesis that less than 46% of users have Screen time >10 hours will be rejected.

AVERAGE DAILY FREE TIME OF USERS

Dataset shows that 72% users have average free time of less than 5 hours per day. Whereas 25% users have daily free time between 5–10 hours and only 3% users have more than 10 hours of average free time per day.

To check the significance of our null hypothesis ‘Free Time < 5 hours for 70% users’, we performed a one-proportion test. The test shows p-value > 0.05 which means we can not reject the hypothesis that almost 70% of users have less than 5 hours of average daily free time.

AVERAGE TIME USERS SPEND ON SOCIAL MEDIA PER DAY

Users Responses show that 56.7% users spend less than 2 hours on Social Media per day. Whereas 26.7% users daily spend 2–5 hours on Social Media and only 6.7% users spend more than 5 hours on social media per day.

Normality Test

Since in the Normality test the P-Value is much less than 0.05, that indicates that our data is not distributed normally for responses received for Average time spent on social media.

To check the significance of our null hypothesis ‘Time Spent on Social Media > 2 hours for 35% users’, we performed a one-proportion test. The test shows p-value > 0.05 which means we can not reject the hypothesis that almost 35% of users have less than 5 hours of average daily free time.

MOSTLY USED DEVICE TO ACCESS SOCIAL MEDIA

Observing received responses we conclude that more than 85% of users mostly use Mobile phones to access social media.

MOSTLY USED SOCIAL MEDIA APPS

The study shows that the mostly used social media apps are Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram. More than 90% of users responded that one of these 3 apps consumes the most of the time they spend using social media.

IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON WELL BEING

Received responses shows that 56.7% users have experienced the bad impact of social media on their overall well being. Whereas 13.3% users disagree with the statement that ‘Social Media has a bad Impact on Users Overall Well Being’ and 30% users have neutral response.

Normality Test : Since the P-Value is much less than 0.005 that indicates that, our data is not distributed normally for responses received for Effects of social media on Overall Well-being of users.

Mean Test

To check the significance of our null hypothesis ‘Social Media has no Effect on Users overall well being’ vs alternative hypothesis ‘Social media has bad Impact on user overall well-being’, we performed a mean test. The test shows p-value = 0.00 which means our null hypothesis is rejected and we can not reject the hypothesis that the rate of effect of social media on users’ well-being is greater than 3 which means we can agree that Social media has the bad impact of users ‘ overall well being.

ANOVA Table

Using excel we applied Regression analysis on our data where we calculated the dependency of users overall well being on users total screen time, time they spend on social media and their age.

Received Model has R square = 0.898 and standard error of 0.7333 and significant f = 1.6 e-25 and all parameters have p-value of greater than 0.05.

CONCLUSION

The study concluded that more than 46% of users have screen time of more than 10 hours and users who spend more than 2 hours on social media are 35% . And Tests Shows That all users who spend more time on social media have higher risks of having a bad impact on their well- being and time management capabilities.