What is the extent of usage of social media among college students?
Descriptive statistics and frequencies were used to conduct the analysis. To measure the extent of usage of social media, five questions were used. The questions were as follows: 1) Do you use any forms of social networking sites on the internet, 2) Check all forms of social networking sites that you currently use, 3) Which social networking profile do you update most often, 4) How often do you visit social networking sites, and 5) Why do you use social networking sites.
The highest score one could acquire for the variable of social media was a 14. The mean score was 9.6. Results showed that 65.6% of participants scored between 10 and 13. The score with the highest frequency was 10, which comprised of 40.6% of the sample. All of the college students sampled indicated that they did use some form of social media, as indicated in Table 1 (Appendix).
Participants reported updating their Facebook page the most (88.5%), and Twitter (11.5%). Frequency of use indicated that 57 (59.4%) students visited a social networking site several times a day. Reasons for using the social networking sites varied. Communication with family and friends was the most popular reason students used social media, with 91.7% of participants indicating this was the reason. Also, 59.4% said they used the sites for entertainment and 57.3% said they used the sites when they felt bored. Additional reasons reported included planning activities (33.3%), companionship (11.5%), and other reasons such as communicating with people far away (10.4%).