Perceived Impact of Social Media on Higher Secondary School Students
Loading...
Date
2019
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
CCSHAU
Abstract
Social media has exploded as a category of online discourse where people create content, share it,
bookmark it and network at a prodigious rate. Social media is fast changing the public discourse in society
and setting trends and agenda in topics that range from the environment and politics to technology and the
entertainment industry. The study was conducted in Hisar district of Haryana state. It was a comparative
study of rural v/s urban schools. For the present investigation four schools (two private and two government
higher secondary schools) were selected from both the areas. From the selected schools XI and XII standard
40 students (both male and female) were selected randomly from respective schools. The sample comprised
of 160 students, 160 parents and 25 teachers were selected randomly. Thus the total sample comprised of
345 respondents. Two separate well structured interview schedules were developed for data collection. The
collected data were quantified and interpreted by using suitable statistical tools to draw meaningful
inference. Personal profile of the students revealed that majority of the students were belonged to 17-18
years of age were male, studying in XII standard with arts as a major stream. Most of the students were fall
under second ordinal position and had 2-3 numbers of siblings. Most of the parents were between 35-45
years of age group belonged to backward class and educated upto higher secondary level in both the schools.
Both parents and students keep themselves updates with latest know and how through newspaper, television,
mobile phones, and mobile with internet connections. Majority of the students were aware and utilizing
social media such as facebook whatsapp, youtube, messenger and wikipedia and generally spent more than
two hours on social media irrespective of their locale. Most of the students perceived the impact of the social
media in terms of loneliness, loss of appetite and stress. However parents and teachers perceived the mental
impact of social media in terms of loss of appetite, stress, insomnia, loneliness and decrease self confidence
and perceived physical impact of the social media was observed in case of eyes strain, headache, ringxiety
and inclination towards eating junk foods while using social media. Whereas perceived social impact was
felt in terms of lack of interaction with parents, neighbours and relatives. The results further highlighted the
facts that rural parents and teachers had unfavourable attitude towards social media whereas teachers had
favorable attitude towards social media. In case of urban area majority of parents and teachers both had
favorable attitude towards social media. Relationship between dependent and independent variables showed
age was positively correlated with physical and social health of the students whereas education was
positively correlated with all the three parameters viz; mental, physical and social health of the students. This
showed that young and educated person is more conscious and vigilant regarding the mental, physical and
social health of their children. Most common constraints felt by the students were; parents disapproval, non
availability of net facilities and perceived internet as a costly affair. Hence in order to solve the above
mentioned problems it is recommended that parents should themselves equipped with computer skill so that
they can guide their children properly in terms of how, when and what type of social media they should use
in order to show the right path to their children.
Description
Keywords
null