Abstract
Social media has rapidly grown and become a prominent and integral part of our daily lives. Social media usage has various effects on users. The purpose of this research is to provide an insight on the current social media usage patterns of young adults in South Africa and to explore the implications of social media usage on social interactions. A survey was conducted and the data gathered from 103 participants was analysed. The usage pattern analysis found that most users are followers rather than posters. The following factors were found through exploratory factor analysis: social media dependency, social interaction impact and false self-comparison/impress. It was found that social media usage affects face-to-face conversations and therefore affects the quality of relationships. It was also found that these factors are linked to social norms.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Ali, A.H.: The power of social media in developing nations: new tools for closing the global digital divide and beyond. Harv. Hum. Rights J. 24, 185–219 (2011)
Haenlein, M., Kaplan, A.M.: Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of social media. Bus. Horiz. 53, 59–68 (2010)
Worldometers: Worldometers: Population. http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/south-africa-population/. Accessed 19 Mar 2018
Shapshak, T.: Forbes. Retrieved from Tech: South Africa has 21 million internet users, mostly on mobile, 19 July 2017. https://www.forbes.com/sites/tobyshapshak/2017/07/19/south-africa-has-21m-internet-users-mostly-on-mobile/#60a093521b2d. Accessed 29 Dec 2018
Statista: Number of monthly active Facebook users worldwide as of 4th quarter 2017 (in millions). Retrieved from Internet: Social Media & User-Generated Content. https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/. Accessed 22 Nov 2018
Business Tech: How many people use Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in South Africa. Retrieved from Business Tech, 18 September 2017. https://businesstech.co.za/news/internet/199318/how-many-people-use-facebook-twitter-and-instagram-in-south-africa/. Accessed 29 Dec 2018
Ryan, T., Xenos, S.: Who uses Facebook? An investigation into the relationship between the Big Five, shyness, narcissim, loneliness, and Facebook usage. Comput. Hum. Behav. 27(5), 1658–1664 (2011)
Zhu, Y.-Q., Chen, H.-G.: Social media and human need satisfaction: implication for social media marketing. Bus. Horiz. 58(3), 335–345 (2015)
Ainin, S., Jaafar, N.I., Tajudeen, F.P.: Understanding the impact of social media usage among organizations. Infom. Manag. 55, 30–321 (2018)
Dennis, J., Michikyan, M., Subrahmanyam, K.: Can you guess who I am? Real, ideal, and false self-presentation on Facebook among emerging adultd. Emerg. Adulthood 3(1), 55–64 (2015)
Fuchs, C.: Social Media: A Critical Introduction. SAGE Publications Ltd., London (2017)
McElroy, J., Moore, K.: The influence of personality on Facebook usage, wall postings, and regrets. Comput. Hum. Behav. 28(1), 267–274 (2012)
Fuchs, C.: Internet and Society: Social Theory in the Information Age. Routledge, New York (2008)
Azucar, D., Marengo, D., Settani, M.: Predicting the Big 5 personality traits from digital footprints on social media: a meta-analysis. Pers. Individ. Differ. 124, 150–159 (2018)
Cialdini, R.B., Trost, M.R.: Social influence: social norms, conformity and compliance. Social influence: Social norms, conformity, and compliance. In: Gilbert, D., Fiske, S., Lindzy, G. (eds.) The Handbook of Social Psychology, vol. 2, McGraw-Hill, Boston (1999)
Elliot, A.J., Kasser, T., Kim, Y., Sheldon, K.M.: What is satisfying about satisfying events? Testing 10 candidate psychological needs. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 80(2), 325–339 (2001)
Lee, C.S., Ma, L.: News sharing in social media: the effect of gratification and prior experience. Comput. Hum. Behav. 28, 331–339 (2012)
Whiting, A., Williams, D.: Why people use social media: a uses and gratifications approach. Qual. Mark. Res. 16, 362–369 (2013)
Denny, E., Mackie, G., Moneti, F., Shakya, H.: What are social norms? How are they measured? UNICEF, San Diego (2015)
Bukowski, M.W., Laursen, B., Rubin, K.H.: Handbook of Peer Interactions, Relationships and Groups. The Guilford Press, New York (2018)
Jackson, J.: A conceptual and measurement model for norms and roles. Pac. Sociol. Rev. 9, 35–48 (1966)
Thomas, D.R.: A general inductive approach for analyzing qualitative evaluation data. Am. J. Eval. 27(2), 57–75 (2006)
Cheng, L., Genevie, J., Misra, S., Yuan, M.: The iPhone effet: the quality of in-person social interactions in the presence of mobile devices. Environ. Behav. 48(2), 275–298 (2016)
Evans, J.R., Mathur, A.: The value of online surveys. Internet Res. 15, 195–219 (2015)
Bruin, J.: Newtest: command to compute new test. UCLA: Statistical Consulting Group (2006). https://stats.idre.ucla.edu/stata/ado/analysis/. Accessed 29 Dec 2018
Brown, T., Onsman, A., Williams, B.: Exploratory factor analysis: a five-step guide for novices. Aust. J. Paramed. 8(3), 1–13 (2012)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Paideya, S., Budree, A., Arora, S. (2019). Investigating the Usage Patterns and the Implications of Young Adults’ Social Media Usage in South Africa. In: Stephanidis, C. (eds) HCI International 2019 - Posters. HCII 2019. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1034. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23525-3_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23525-3_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-23524-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-23525-3
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)