Gender Differences in Usage of Social Networking Sites and Perceived Online Social Support on Psychological Well Being of Youth

Social Networking Sites have been consuming a major part in the Youth daily routine. The study was conducted with an aim to study the effect of social networking sites and perceived social support on the psychological well-being of the youth. The sample size was 100 which had 50 males and 50 females. All the participants were college going students or new entrants in the corporate sector. The participants were asked to fill the questionnaire which had four parts – 1. Social Networking Sites Survey, 2. Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support Assessment, 3. Psychological General Well-Being Index. The results indicated a negative relationship between the usage of social networking sites and the psychological well-being while positive relationship existed between online perceived social support and psychological well-being. Certain gender differences were also found among the variables like perceived social support and attraction towards social networking sites. This study has a lot of implications in terms of creating awareness among the youth so that they limit the usage of social networking sites and also a lot of research in the Indian context is yet to be done.