Depression and Life Satisfaction: A Comparative Study among Social Networking Sites’ Users

Abstract

Present investigation was aimed to determine the influence of social networking sites on depression and life satisfaction among adolescents as the culture of online networking has become an integral part in the life of every individual particularly adolescents. The sample of the study consists of 90 adolescents that was chosen from various senior secondary schools through purposive sampling technique from Aligarh district. Data were collected by administering Mental Health Inventory-38 developed by Rand Group (1983) which comprised of six subscales and two global scales. Only two subscales named depression and life satisfaction were taken into consideration for present investigation. Data were analyzed by applying t-test and adolescents were found to differ significantly in terms of depression. Though, the difference was not found to be significant for life satisfaction. The trend of results also showed that adolescents who use social networking sites for more time have higher level of depression as compared to the adolescents who use social networking sites for less than one and two hours.