Impact of Online Social Networking on Youth: Case Study of Mauritius

Abstract

Online social websites have achieved a phenomenal global growth over the last decade, attracting much attention from researchers worldwide. It is a known fact that young adults and teenagers are the most avid users of such sites. Based on the findings of several research studies in the Online Social Networks (OSNs) area, it has been found that these OSN sites are having a great impact on the lives of young people. But since most of the research works were carried out in other countries, it was found necessary and important to carry out a study in Mauritius on the impact of OSNs on the local youth. Such a study would provide an insight on the influence of OSNs on the behaviour and lifestyle of youngsters in the country. This paper reports the findings of a research work that was carried out in Mauritius targeting adolescents aging from 12 to 18 years where 4545 responses were collected through a survey. It was found that the majority of Mauritian youths were using OSNs on a large scale, mainly for communication purposes. According to this study, although OSNs have a positive impact on the adolescents, yet quite a large number of respondents reported having met with negative experiences on these online sites.

Youth health, gender, and social media: Mauritius as a glocal place

“…Mauritian Internet users mostly use the medium for information search, communication and social media use (Gopee, 2016). According to previous studies, young people of age 14-35 years old are the highest user-group of social media, and it is estimated that on average, each young person spends more than 35 hours per month on social media sites such as Facebook (Chan-Meetoo & Rathacharen., 2011; Khedo et al, 2013). Moreover, Seebaluck et al (2015) found that the Mauritian family-related culture influenced the young people's purpose and amount of social media usage.…”

Optimization

“…6 Constantly navigating the stream of news from 'friends' on social media, including a large proportion whom they never met, especially young people feel constant pressure to live up to the same exhilarating experiences that these friends share. Reading what others are doing while being a bore at home feels unbearable for many (Kavi et al 2013). Two decades ago, bullying was limited to face to face and thus a relatively short time window; now that space has grown exponentially, in terms of time, space, and torture tools.…”