Sixteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

Little has been discussed about the deleterious effects of social media and the need to examine various angles of social media to identify their inherent problems. Therefore, this research set out to uncover what groups in our society are more susceptible to negative outcomes of social media and its contents. Having administered a translated Rosenberg’s Self-esteem Scale (RSES) together with other survey questions to 103 young people in Korea, correlation analysis, independent samples t-test, and regression analysis were conducted. The results revealed that gender and socioeconomic status (SES) were primary factors associated with the social media users’ self-esteem, and the two variables (gender and SES) accounted for differences in self-esteem. Finally, the same RSES was administered to the participants before and after they watched an upsetting social media posting, and a paired sample t-test was conducted. Though no difference was found in the overall self-esteem score, the participants showed a change in self-esteem with one question in RSES when the questionnaire was broken down and analyzed.