Social Media Consumption as a Predictor of Youth development: An Analysis from Public Sector College Students of Lahore

Abstract

Internet and social media has changed the way of living. Pakistan is a developing country with huge population of energetic youth. Pakistani Youth is well aware with latest digital technology and getting opportunities created by the social media platforms. Pakistani Govt. has launched many projects for trainings and learning digital skills for youth. Digi-skills, Digital marketing, freelancing and other internet social media based projects are started for empowering the youth.   Pakistan has great potential in digital world but due to lack of resources and guidance this is not used for properly. In recent Years Pakistani Govt. has started many projects for youth development. College Youth is also taking great interest in availing these digital opportunities created by the Govt. Social media consumption is very high among youth across the world as well as in the Pakistan. Numerous studies have been conducted on the negative impacts of social media usage however; recent studies are focusing on the positive impacts of the social media. The current study is an attempt to find out the role of social media in youth development when social media consumption is based on building constructive relationships and enhancing political interests. The study is based on quantitative strand of the research inquiry by using the survey method. The population of the current study is entire collegiate youth in the district Lahore. From this population a sample of 2200 respondents was gathered by applying the multistage sampling technique. A pre-coded self-administered questionnaire was used to obtain the information from the respondents. Regression analysis was used to determine the relationship between the study variables. The findings of the study illustrate that a positive and significant association exists between the study variables i.e. increase in the social media usage for political interests, career planning, building relationship and civic engagement will increase the youth development by 75%. This is a strong relationship however, in terms of effect of each variable the political interests and civic engagement are of the prime importance in increasing the youth development.