Social Media Usage and Its Addiction Level among Generation Y Agricultural Scholars in Meghalaya, India

Abstract

This study examined Generation Y’s psychological addiction to social media with specific regard to Research Gate, Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp and Twitter. The addiction was deduced using Griffiths’ five components that govern behavioral addiction: tolerance, salience, withdrawal, conflict and relapse. The tenacity of this study was to clinch if Generation Y agricultural scholars’ was in fact addicted to social media because of their necessity to sustain their connections with peers. The study reveals that Research Gate was the most widely used social media (95.00 per cent). About ninety four per cent (93.75 per cent) of the respondents primarily used social media for downloading study materials. Eighty eight per cent of the respondents had more than five social media account. 76.25 per cent of the respondents spend more than 3 hour on social media. About seventy three per cent (72.50 per cent) of the respondents spend two hour on social media for agriculturally related issues. The major advantages of using social media is “exposure to latest knowledge, skills and technology in research endeavors” followed by “gaining more visibility in research areas” as reported by 95.00 per cent and 93.75 per cent of the respondents respectively. 68.75 per cent and 7.50 per cent of the respondents reported high addiction and low addiction on social media, respectively. The results indicated that Generation-Y agricultural scholars faced constraints towards tolerance, salience, withdrawal and relapse. However, they face intrapsychic conflict, but not interpersonal conflict. Major problem associated with social media in dissemination of information is “costly data charge for high speed internet connectivity” (91.25 percent) being followed by “erratic internet connectivity in the campus” (90.00 per cent).