Social Media and Emotional Well-being: Pursuit of Happiness or Pleasure

Abstract

Virtual engagement of lives has been made possible with the advent of social media. Almost 80% of the day are spent virtually on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat, etc. Usage of social media to connect to and communicate with the ones we care about is always healthy, termed as social networking. Social dysfunction occurs when the constant communication leads to the point where our real or offline life gets replaced by virtual or online life. There is a slight boundary between social networking and social dysfunction. When social networking is advantageous, social dysfunction affects emotional well-being. When emotional well-being is affected, many users experience a compulsion to dissociate from the real world as they find virtual world, full of fantasy and enjoyment. When the Internet was created, perhaps no one was aware of its potential. More than the convenience for sharing of information it has brought the world so close to crumbling the geographical boundaries. The more people-to-people communication is, the more is the strengthening of relationships, bonds grow stronger with ‘more’ social media platforms. Being on ‘more’ social media platforms has become a benchmark for living amidst the younger generation. Either as an activity of happiness or as an activity of pleasure, users tend to use social media at varying levels. This paper aims to conceptualize the the intricacies of social media in young lives and to discern whether their association is happiness or pleasure activity. The research method of this paper has a mixed-methods research design combining data from structured survey with information outputs from in-depth interviews.