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Social media are e-channels that provide opportunity for mankind to socialize, to know, to explore, to find and to self-present with enormous audiences who draw value from online believes (Carr & Hayes, 2015). In other words social media was meant as media platform or online world. Online media has become a stage for every age group in their daily lives under the planet of advanced technology. It became a part of daily routines, tremendous advancement of Face book, Instagram and other digital media software’s utilized by every age groups particularly youngsters as an active element of utilizing media. Adolescents are empowered both positively and negatively by the make use of media platforms. Social media is an effective device to uphold healthy connections and to attain information. The purpose of the research is to determine social media usage of adolescents who are studying in rural as well as urban areas of Visakhapatnam district with the objectives given below.

• To find the difference between boys and girls in the usage of social media.
• To study the difference in social media usage among rural and urban respondents.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

The study on “Do Boys and Girls Differ in Social Media Usage?: A Comparative Research”. Carried out during 2019-2020.Currentresearch was planned based on Ex-post facto research design. Rural and urban areas of Visakhapatnam district of Andhra Pradesh was purposively selected as the locale of the study. The overall sample consists of 120 early adolescents [13-16 years] and 120 late adolescents [17-19 years] with an uniform proportionate of both genders. The personal information like age, gender and class of study of the respondents was obtained through general information schedule. Social media usage questionary developed by Savita Gupta and Liyaqat Bashir (2018) was used to evaluate level of social networking utilization among the adolescents.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Table 1 represents participant’s demographic data which includes age, gender and class of study. In the overall sample equal (16.66%) of adolescents belong to 13-14, 14-15 and 15-16 years in each age group whereas 25 per cent adolescents were belong to 17-18 and 18-19 years age groups equally. Boys and girls were equally taken up for the study. Data regarding to class of study, one third of adolescents (25%) were completed 12th and degree first years,  while 10th and 9th  class (15% and 14.58%) respectively, followed by 8th and 7th class (13.75% & 6.66% respectively).
Frequency distribution of adolescents according to social media usage is furnished in the Table 2. It is worthy to mention that less than half (42.5%) of the rural adolescents studied were in the category of average level of social media usage, however 39.16 per cent of the rural adolescents are in above average category and 10 per cent were in high level and remaining of them belong to low level of social media usage. While on the contrary, half (50%) of the urban adolescents studied rank above average level and less than half (35.16%) of urban adolescents are in high category, and 14.16 per cent of them grade in average level of social media usage. Whereas in total sample, less than half (44.58%) of  the adolescents  belong to above average level of social media usage, 28.33 per cent in average level, followed by the high in level (22.91%) and remaining 4 per cent of them in the lower category of social media utilization (Fig.1). A survey by Lenhart et al. (2012) found that about 95% of adolescents use internet, 81 per cent use online apps and face book is the most trending adopted social network. It has been evident by Neelamalar (2009) that youngsters have adored to social media at higher levels.
The table 3 depicts the gender disparity among rural participants with respect to social media usage. There was a highly and positively significant difference found between rural boys and girls. Boys are using social media more than their counterparts. The finding of Alfarwareh (2014) is in concord with the recent study which states that males were highly addicted to smart phones as compared to females. It is also notable that there was non significance difference was found between urban boys and girls regarding social media usage. Similarly report obtained from Shilpa and Deshpanda (2016) has stated that despite of gender all students were highly addicted to smart phone and also Nur Gorkemil (2017) stated that no statistical interrelation found between gender and internet usage.
It was surprising to note that there was non-significant difference found between rural and urban adolescents regarding social media (Table 4). A study done by Sowndarya and Mounesh Pattar (2018) revealed that prevalence of internet addiction among students from suburban was more than two third (83.3%) and similar in (78%) rural area and much difference was not found.

Table 1: General profile of adolescents

Table 2: Frequency distribution of adolescents according to social media usage

Table 3: Gender based comparison on social media usage of adolescents

Table 4: Mean difference among the social media usage of adolescents based on locality

 

CONCLUSION

From the results of the study, when the mean score of the boys and girls were compared regarding media usage, boys were using more than the counterparts but significantly positive difference was noted in rural scenario but was not seen in urban areas. When locality is taken into consideration, there was no disparity was seen among rural and urban adolescents. From the outcomes of the study it is concluded that adolescents in rural area need to be channeled in using media in a more purposeful means. Hence there is a need for educating the youths regarding mode of utilization of e-channels and medias for the betterment of their life.

REFERENCES

Alfawareh, H. M., & Jusoh, S. (2014). Smartphone usage among university students: Najran University. International Journal of Academic Research, 6(2), 321 -326.
Carr & Hayes, (2015). Social Media: Defining, Developing, and Driving. Atlantic Journal of Communication. 23(1), 46-65.
Lenhart, L. (2010). Social media and mobile internet use among adolescents and young adults. Washington D.C. Pew Internet and American Life Project: pp. 1-6.
Neelmalar, M., & Chitra, P. (2009). A study on impact of social networking sites on Indian youth, Journal of New Media and Society. 6(1), 125-145.
NurGorkemli, (2017). Internet and social media usage of secondary school students in rural area, MANAS Journal of Social Studies. 6(1), 1-11.
Shilpa & Deshpande, (2016). A analytical study of smartphone addiction among engineering students: A gender difference. The international journal of Indian psychology. 4(1), DIP:18.01.128/2016040/.

Sowndarya, T. A., & Pattar, M. (2018). Pattern of internet addiction among urban and rural school students, Mangaluru, India. Comparative cross-sectional study. International Journal of Contemporary Pediatrics. 5(5), 1750-1754.