Social Media Usage and Physical Inactivity among School Children

BANINDER RAHI
Vivekananda Institute of Professional Studies, New Delhi

Abstract

The power of social media is virtually untameable. The advent of social media has shrunk the world to what Marshal McLuhan once termed ‘global village’. This paper has examined into the amount of time government and private school students spent on social media vis-à-vis on physical activities. It has attempted to answer the questions: (i) How much time government and private school students spend using different social media applications?, (ii) Is there any association between government and private school students regarding time spent on social media applications?, (iii) Whether they use social media applications primarily to communicate with others, and (iv) how much time, on an average, school students spend on outdoor games after school hours. For the purpose of the study, a self administered survey was conducted among five government and private schools each.

Keywords: Social media, social media applications, physical activities, school children

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Baninder Rahi is currently working as an Assistant Professor with the Vivekananda School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Vivekananda Institute of Professional Studies, New Delhi. Her areas of research interest include print journalism, social media and communication research.