Social Media Exposure and Well-being of Emerging Adult Students

Life in 21^st century cannot be imagined without social media. It has become an integral part of common people’s life of all age groups. The increased engagement with social media in recent years has enabled users to obtain vast information from different sources. It has moved well beyond simple entertainment and now has a profound effect on many areas of functioning. Research indicates that interaction with social media in one way or another have influenced young people’s behaviours, attitudes and choices. The impression of link between social networks, media use and the sense of well-being holds a strong emphasis on adolescent and professional perspectives although there is little research that underlies these beliefs. Studies highlight that youth of modern era use smartphones and other gadgets in high numbers which leads to chronic sleep deprivation having a detrimental impact on cognitive abilities and socio-emotional functioning. Social media and depression are “generally correlated” however there have been inconsistent results in certain areas. Emerging adults (18-23 age) in a crucial and vulnerable stage of development in life professionally, financially, personally are reported to use social networking sites the most. In this context this research aims to highlight how emerging adult’s behaviour and well-being has been influenced by changing pattern of social media exposure. It was hypothesized that there will be no statistically significant relationship between the degree of social media use and sense of well-being the crosstab of which validated the hypothesis. Results contradicted previous research which showed social media has a complicated relationship with well-being. This research also explores the impact of demographic features on media engagement and sense of well-being. Results indicate no significant impact of gender and streams of study of the emerging adults on their sense of well-being. Neither the social fabric of the location of their Institute had any impact on their sense of well-being. However, a comparative analysis of well-being pattern among the different degree of social media engagement highlights reverse relationship, more clearly speaking high media user have worst wellbeing. Excessive Social media exposure has become detrimental to overall well-being irrespective of the demographic features. It concludes with the merging needs of policy advocacies emerging adults’ social media usage.