Social Media Addiction Amongst University Students Research Paper

Social Media Addiction Amongst University Students - Research Paper Example Hence, the research question for this study is, â€Å"Which gender and age group is more addicted to social media and why?† Review of Literature Dryer (2010) reported that by March of 2010, there were 200 million blogs worldwide, 450 million Facebook accounts, 27 million tweets every 24 hours from Twitter and 1.2 billion views on You Tube every day. As of 2012, it was reported that almost 75% of teens and young adults are members of at least one social networking site (Thompson & Lougheed, 2012), and with Facebook users, 250 million log into the site daily (Facebook, 2011). Such astounding statistics show explosive social media has grown over a short period of time and is expected to relentlessly grow more in the future. Dryer (2010) notes: Social media, i.e., blogs, wikis, social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, multimedia sharing sites like YouTube and Flickr, and social tagging sites like Digg and Yelp, represents a revolutionary shift in the way we communicate. Social media has democratized information and empowered ordinary citizens with the ability to organize, share information, and be heard like never before in our history. Social media is word of mouth on steroids and is beginning to morph from a fun and easy way to stay socially connected with friends into a dynamic and interactive way of doing business (p. 16). Berinstein (2011) contends that the obsession with social media is linked to people’s desperate need to feel good. She concludes that â€Å"social media has offered us a new way to anesthetize a deep-rooted feeling of lack: the more likes we get, the better we feel† (Bernstein, 2011, para. 1). What is addictive is actually the... This essay stresses that going back to the research question, â€Å"Which gender and age group is more addicted to social media and why?†, this research echoes results of past studies that women and younger university students in the age group of 17-21 years are more prone to social media addiction due to the more prolonged time they spend online. Young ladies derive much satisfaction and a boost in their self-esteem when friends like or comment on their posts, especially their photos. They also invest more emotions on their responses to friends’ posts, and are more emotionally distraught when they get disconnected from social media. The roller coaster of emotions they get from such social media sites make it more addictive to them as they continuously search for â€Å"highs† beyond the â€Å"lows† in emotions. In terms of age, younger people have a stronger need to establish human connections with their peers, so they use social media as an avenue to esta blish and nurture these relationships. This paper makes a conclusion that addiction to social media is more common than people think, and surprisingly, more acceptable by society. Living in the age of information and technology is bound to develop such addiction since being socially and intellectually stimulated is a natural preference of people. What needs to be developed to a greater degree is the awareness and self-control necessary in balancing time and effort to enjoy social media as well as live more fulfilled lives in the â€Å"real world† with one’s family and friends.