THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA USAGE ON PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL-BEING AMONG UNDERGRADUATES OF RAJARATA UNIVERSITY OF SRI LANKA

Abstract

Social Media platforms allow individuals to connect, communicate, and interact with others globally, fostering the creation and sharing of user-generated content such as text, images, videos, and links. Social media usage among undergraduate students has become a pervasive and influential aspect of their academic and personal lives. Although social media use has positive social and educational benefits, scholars are currently attempting to identify whether it is destructive because it relates to psychological aspects. Thus, the main objective of this study was to investigate the impact of social media usage (duration of time, motives, social media addiction, and social isolation) on the psychological well-being of undergraduates. A quantitative research approach was used to achieve the study goal. Self-administered structured questionnaires were used to collect primary data from 367 undergraduate students. Stratified sampling techniques were used to represent the strata and ensure that all groups were represented. Regression analysis and basic descriptive statistics were performed using SPSS software. Accordingly, the main conclusions showed that psychological well-being was positively and significantly impacted by all four variables: duration of time, motives, social media addiction, and social isolation. Furthermore, the most important component of social media use that has the greatest ability to predict psychological well-being is user motive. To effectively address this emerging phenomenon, the conclusions of this study will be helpful to parents, academic and non-academic personnel, social network developers, and mobile application developers.