TITTLE: A STUDY ON SOCIAL MEDIA PREFERENCE BY YOUNGSTERS
AUTHOR: DISHA GUPTA
INTRTODUCTION:
In the digital age, social media platforms play a central role in shaping the communication patterns, preferences, and lifestyles of youngsters. With increasing internet penetration and smartphone usage, platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Twitter have become integral to daily life, offering varied features for networking, entertainment, information sharing, and self-expression. Understanding youngsters’ preferences among these platforms is important for researchers, educators, marketers, and policymakers, as these preferences influence social behavior, opinion formation, and digital engagement. This study attempts to analyse and compare the preference levels of youngsters toward selected social media platforms using primary data collected through a Google Form survey and statistically examined through Analysis of Variance (ANOVA).
OBJECTIVE:
To compare youngsters’ preferences for Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Twitter using ANOVA based on survey responses.
LITERATURE REVIEW:
1. Adeosun and Akinwalere (2025) found that among students in tertiary institutions, social media usage is prevalent and preferences vary significantly, with a large portion using platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp for information seeking and communication, highlighting differential preference patterns among youth.
2. Mitchelstein (2018) reported that young users attribute different social meanings and functions to various platforms—WhatsApp is preferred for direct communication, Instagram for stylized self-presentation, Facebook for socially acceptable identity, and Twitter for informal information sharing—showing how platform characteristics shape youth preferences.
DATA COLLECTION:
The study is based on primary data collected through a structured questionnaire using Google Forms. Respondents were asked to rate their preference for selected social media platforms—Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Twitter—on a 1 to 10 rating scale, where 1 indicates very low preference and 10 indicates very high preference. A total of 45 respondents (youngsters) participated in the survey. Equal numbers of observations were maintained for each platform to ensure balanced data, making it suitable for applying Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) to compare preference levels across the selected social media platforms.
DATA ANALYSIS:
|
Source of Variation |
SS |
df |
MS |
F |
P-value |
F crit |
|
Rows |
93.5 |
44 |
2.125 |
0.702792 |
0.910477 |
1.468722 |
|
Columns |
10.37778 |
3 |
3.459259 |
1.144066 |
0.333817 |
2.673218 |
|
Error |
399.1222 |
132 |
3.023653 |
|||
|
Total |
503 |
179 |
|
|
|
|
Ho(Null Hypothesis): there is no significant difference in youngsters rating among social media preference.
H1(alternative Hypothesis): Atleast one social media preference differs significantly from others.
Since the P-value(0.910) is greater than 0.05, we accept the null hypothesis(Ho). This indicates that there is no statistically difference in youngsters rating among the four social media platforms.
OVERALL CONCLUSION:
The study concludes that youngsters exhibit a broadly similar level of preference across the selected social media platforms—Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Twitter. The analysis indicates that no single platform stands out as being significantly more or less preferred than the others, suggesting a balanced usage pattern among youngsters. This reflects the tendency of young users to engage with multiple platforms simultaneously, each serving different communication, networking, and information-sharing needs, rather than relying heavily on only one social media platform.
REFERENCE:
- Adeosun, O. T., & Akinwalere, B. O. (2021). Social media usage and preference among undergraduate students in tertiary institutions. Journal of Humanities, Social Sciences and Creative Arts, 16(2), 45–58.
- Mitchelstein, E., & Boczkowski, P. J. (2018). Youth and the social media landscape: Functions, meanings, and platform preferences. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 23(5), 245–261.