The Relationship of Online Social Networking and Various Psychological Behaviors

Abstract

The basis of this study is to evaluate and measure the correlation between the amount of time an individual spends online social networking and their self-reported levels of loneliness, depression, anxiety, and stress. With societies having increased connectivity, the researchers wanted to investigate how this affects our psychological functioning. This research is a follow-up study that targets a sample population of 189 people, over the age of 24, using a final scale that combined the UCLA Loneliness and DASS-21 scales. The final scale was created via Google Forms and was later published on Amazon Mechanical Turk. Results for statistical significance were analyzed through Spearman Rank Order Correlations, ANOVAS and descriptive statistics to indicate correlations between social networking and self-reported levels of loneliness, depression, anxiety, and stress from using both Facebook and YouTube platforms.