Introduction

Social media has become a part of life, which has led to a change in the pattern of the
communication process (Mir, 2014). The early 21st century has led to the growth and evolution
of different social networking sites which have helped to connect with people from different
parts of the world, help to share information, and gain knowledge.

China, with 1,021 million users, is the country with the most social media users as of 2023.
India ranks second with 755 million.

Social media engages people and especially teens and young adults. They spent a long time on
social media checking what others are doing, and checking their own picture got how many likes
and comments. They compare themselves with their friends and this reduces their self-
confidence. In the last decade, the young adult internet population has remained the most likely
to go online. 93% of teens ages 12-17 go online, as do 93% of young adults ages 18-29. One
quarter (74%) of all adults ages 18 and older go online.

Facebook is currently the most commonly-used online social network among adults. Among
adult profile owners 73% have a profile on Facebook, 48% have a profile on MySpace and
14% have a LinkedIn profile.

Young adults lead the way when it comes to using Twitter or status updating. One-third of
online 18-29-year-olds post or read status updates.

Social Media Definitions

The definition of social media as a “platform to create profiles, make explicit and traverse
relationships” by (Boyd & Ellison, 2008).

Authors Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) have referred social media as to “a group of Internet-
based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0,
and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content”

Social media refers to “Internet-based applications built on Web 2.0, while Web 2.0 refers to
a concept as well as a platform for harnessing collective intelligence” (Huang & Benyoucef,
2013 p. 246). Social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, provide people with
pervasive network connectivity (Asur & Huberman, 2010).

As stated by Schiffman and Kanuk (2004), since social media comprises peer communication
and idealized media images, users tend to engage in a process of social comparison within
this context. For instance, when being exposed to idealized images of others’ material
possessions on Instagram or Facebook, one may want to post a similar photo to show off his
or her possessions.

Social media has been referred to as “social media sites” (Diga & Kelleher, 2009), or a set of
information technologies which facilitate interactions and networking (Kapoor et al., 2017;
Oestreicher-Singer & Zalmanson, 2013).
Importance of social media

Networking on social media helps to connect with others, build new relationships, and strengthen
established ones. People nowadays check social media, again and again, to find how many likes,
and comments they get. Based on the number of likes, and comment they get based it helps to
boost their mood and self-confidence.

Social Media has now become a platform of building blocks for getting a person social. Different
building blocks of social media are;

Identity- It represents how people represent themselves in the virtual world.

Sharing- It refers to sharing different activities on social media. It has now become a trend to
broadcast everything happening in life through social media.

Conversation- Nowadays people meet with each other face to face less than they meet more on
video calls. People use different social networking sites to communicate with each other by
social media.

Relationship- Social plays an important part in our life to build relationships with people. People
follow each other, and put likes in these ways people develop connections and later form
relationships.

Reputation- Now in the 21st century a lot of people’s reputations are formed from social media.
The number of people who follow them, the likes they get all these are their source of reputation.

The Negative Effects of Social Media

Many studies had been conducted which describe that social media plays a central role in
communication and connecting with people but also long time usage of social media can be
harmful and can lead to addiction, lowering one’s performance level, and low self-esteem.
They constantly check their social media sites to find out the number of likes and comments
they got on their posts, and reels. Social brings out many issues like social comparison, they
compare with their friends and relatives. They try to compare with others based on the aspects
of clothing, love life, appearance, etc. These comparison reduces their self-worth, and self-
confidence, and lead to poor self-image. Nowadays people think that the more likes,
comments, and followers they think their status is high in social, they are more popular
among friends and this helps to boost their self-esteem. Schufreider (2015) states high levels
of connectedness help “individuals manage their emotions…facilitate keeping the individual’s
overwhelming negative feelings at bay” and “can also lessen one’s low level of self-esteem”.
Thus these all impact to one’s quality of life. Albooshi (2015) claims people “revealed that
their use of social networks like 14 Facebook and Twitter has made their lives worse” (pp. 9).
Facebook users who are not addicted are more satisfied with their lives (Blachnio,
Prezepiorka, Pantic, 2015) Young adults are especially at risk because their self-image is
heavily characterized by peer influence and a significant piece during this developmental
period is an “increased focus on the self” (Valkenburg, Peter, Schouten, 2006)

According to self-esteem expert Morris Rosenberg, self-esteem is quite simply one’s attitude
toward oneself. He described it as a “favorable or unfavorable attitude toward the self. Self-
esteem- is “a positive or negative attitude toward the self” (Clay, Vignoles, Dittmar, 2005). Self-
esteem can be divided into high and low self-esteem. High self-esteem people have to believe in
themselves and feel good about who they are. But on the other hand, low self-esteem people lack
confidence about who they are and what they do. People with too low self-esteem suffer more
from anxiety, depression, and self-doubt

Definition of self-esteem

According to self-esteem expert Morris Rosenberg, self-esteem is quite simply one’s attitude
toward oneself (1965). He described it as a “favorable or unfavorable attitude toward the self”.

Self-esteem refers to a person’s overall sense of his or her value or worth. It can be considered a
sort of measure of how much a person “values, approves of, appreciates, prizes, or likes him or
herself” (Adler & Stewart, 2004).

Self-esteem is also defined as a global barometer of self-evaluation involving cognitive

appraisals about general self-worth and affective experiences of the self that are linked to these
global appraisals (Murphy, Stosny, and Morrel, 2005).

Role of self-esteem

Relation between social media and self-esteem

MacIntyre et al. (1999) stated that self-esteem is self-valuation and it is how

people value themselves and how valuable they think they are to others. MacIntyre et al. (1999)
pointed out that people who are low in self-esteem are less engaged in communication and those
who are high in self-esteem they think that they are less involved in the conversation and they
think they will receive negative feedback from others.

Many researchers previously found that people who are less involved in face-to-face
communication show low self-esteem. They find it difficult to communicate face to face as they
have low self-esteem, so they involve in spending more time using instant messaging
(Ehrenberg, Juckes, White & Walsh, 2008). Research on addictive social media use has shown it
to be correlated with self-esteem (Andreassen et al., 2017). It has been also shown that those who
spend more time on social media expressed upward social comparison which can have a negative
effect on youths (Lewallen & Behm-Morawitz, 2016). In addition, some studies on the
relationship between social media and self-esteem have shown that those who spend more time
on social media report lower levels of self-esteem (Vogel, Rose, Okdie, Eckles, & Franz, 2015,
Hawi & Samaha, 2016).
Literature Review:

Technology has advanced a lot in past few decade and it is widely used across the nation. A large
percentage of people use the Internet for their work, academics, communication, etc, whether it
is with smartphones, computers, tablets, or smartphones. Using the internet has both advantages
and disadvantages. People nowadays use social media for communication, education, and
sending information, pictures, and video. The main disadvantage of social media is that people
compare with each other causing lowering their self esteem. According to Polce-Lynch, Myers,
Kliewer, & Kilmartin (2000), “self-esteem, which refers to a person’s general sense of worth or
acceptance, is recognized for the critical role it plays in mental health and psychopathology”.
This knowledge places emphasis in discovering how social media may influence self-esteem due
to its overwhelming presence in today’s society
Method

Aim

The aim of the study is to find out the effect of social media usage on self-esteem and gender.

Objectives:

Against this backdrop, the present study proposes to examine the following research
objectives.
 To explore the effect of social media usage on the self-esteem of young adults.
 To investigate the relationship between social media usage and self-esteem.

Hypotheses:

On the basis of the existing review of the literature, the following hypotheses were
formulated to examine the above-said objectives:

i. Is there any difference between high and low social media usage on self-esteem?
ii. Is there any significant difference between males and females with regard to social
media usage?
iii. Is there any interaction effect on self-esteem and gender?

Research Design:
On the account of the variables, the present research was basically based on a comparison among
different groups 2x2 factorial design. The independent variable for the study was the use of
social media, measured using the Social networking time use scale (SONTUS). The dependent
variable is self-esteem which was measured by the self-esteem scale.

Sample
The participants were young adults of the age group 18-25 years.

Inclusion Criteria:

(1) The subjects need to fall between the ages of 18-25 years.

(2) The subjects must be able to read, write and understand English.

(3) The subjects should have been exposed to the internet in the past 4 weeks.

(4) Individuals should have at least one social media account.

Exclusion Criteria: Individuals who are not having any social media accounts.
TOOLS USED FOR THE DATA COLLECTION

Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSE)

Participants:
The purpose of the 10-item RSE scale is to measure self-esteem. Originally the measure was
designed to measure the self-esteem of high school students. However, since its development, the
scale has been used with a variety of groups including adults, with norms available for many of
those groups.
Scoring: As the RSE is a Guttman scale, scoring can be a little complicated. Scoring involves a
method of combined ratings. Low self-esteem responses are “disagree” or “strongly disagree” on
items 1, 3, 4, 7, and 10, and “strongly agree” or “agree” on items 2, 5, 6, 8, and 9. Two or three
out of three correct responses to items 3, 7, and 9 are scored as one item. One or two out of two
correct responses for items 4 and 5 are considered as a single item; items 1,8, and 10 are scored
as individual items; and combined correct responses (one or two out of two) to items 2 and 6 are
considered to be a single item.
The scale can also be scored by totaling the individual 4-point items after reverse-scoring the
negatively worded items.
Reliability: The RSE demonstrates a Guttman scale coefficient of reproducibility of .92,
indicating excellent internal consistency. Test-retest reliability over a period of 2 weeks reveals
correlations of .85 and .88, indicating excellent stability.
Validity: Demonstrates concurrent, predictive, and construct validity using known groups. The
RSE correlates significantly with other measures of self-esteem, including the Coopersmith Self-
Esteem Inventory. In addition, the RSE correlates in the predicted direction with measures of
depression and anxiety.

Social networking time use scale (SONTUS)

One of the key issues plaguing the existing studies on the use of the social networking sites
(SNSs) is the lack of a uniform index for measuring the time spent on the sites.
The present investigation tries to fill this gap by conceptualizing, developing, and validating a
new construct, which we referred to as social networking time use scale (SONTUS).
SONTUS has five factor solution consisting of 29 items.
SONTUS can be used as a standardized instrument for measuring time spent on sites.
Validity
Convergent validity- SONTUS and its subscales with values ranging between .26 and .43.
Predictive validity of SONTUS and its five subscales was assessed by correlating it with some
standardized measures of personality and wellbeing (i.e., Big-Five Personality Inventory,
Positive Relations with Others, Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, Cheek and Buss Shyness
Scale, Social and Emotional Loneliness Scale for Adults – Short version).
Incremental validity of the SONTUS in the present study (i.e., we examined the degree to which
the five subscales of SONTUS predict personality and wellbeing beyond the effects of
demographic variables and other theoretically related constructs.
Reliability- The internal consistency reliability of SONTUS and its five subscales were examined
using Cronbach’s Alpha (Cronbach, 1951). The analysis reveals that alpha was .92 for the full
scale while its five subscales have alpha values ranging from .83 to .91. Scale employed in
SONTUS provides support for the ‘‘high” alpha values reported in the present study. This is in
line with the suggestion given in Voss et al. (2000) that instruments with more than 4-points
Likert scales in width lead to greater variance and consequently increases the value of alpha. For
the SONTUS construct, we employed 11-point Likert scales in accordance with Voss’s et al.
(2000) recommendation, this may likely be a reason we have a ‘‘high” alpha values.
We conceptualized and measured the time use by the people on the SNSs as a multi-dimensional
construct consisting of five factors: relaxation and free periods, academic-related periods, public-
place-related use, stress-related periods, and motives for use. 

Procedure

Result

Statistics

Discussion

Limitation
Future Research
Reference