University students' preference regarding social media content, internet usage and online friendship patterns

Abstract

Purpose: This study aimed to find out the web content accessed by university students and to compare the level of interaction with real-life friends and online friends. Design/methodology/approach: In this study, the quantitative research design used, and the researcher collected data through the survey method. The population comprises all undergraduate students at the University of the Punjab, Lahore. The sample of 320 students, age ranges from 18 to 22 years from eight selected departments, collected through a simple random sampling technique and after extraction 284 questionnaires evaluated by using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). Findings: The findings of the study showed that students preferred activities on the Internet is to access social networking sites. Additionally, the mobile phone is the most commonly used device among university students to access the Internet. Furthermore, students mostly used Facebook to keep in touch with their old friends and talk on different topics more easily with their online friends as compared to real-life friends. The study also shows that the results of both the hypothesis are significant; therefore, no difference exists regarding time spent on the Internet in real-life friendship patterns and online friendship patterns. Originality/value: The research was used to find out the difference between the online friendship and real-life friendship patterns of the two groups who use the Internet for less time and who spend more time on the Internet among the university students.