Use of Social Networking Sites among the Pakistani Youth

Abstract

This research study was conducted with the objective to examine the usage pattern of Social Networking Sites (SNS) by the Pakistani youth, for which a sample of 500 young people studying in different colleges and universities of the twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad was taken. The sample was consisting of 54.8 percent Male respondents while Female proportion was 45.2 percent and the Mean Age of respondents was 22.97 years. According to the results, Face book was found as the most popular SNS among Pakistani youth with 64.8 percent users, followed by the Skype, while the Twitter was found as the least popular. The majority of youth was using SNS for ‘Above 1 hour up to 2 hours’, while only 8.4 percent of youth was using SNS for ‘more than 4 hours’. So, the youth in Pakistan was not found to be the heavy user of SNS. The Multiple Regression model showed that the youth was using SNS mostly for chatting purpose. Overall, the findings of study support the Uses and Gratification theory presented by Katz, Blumler, & Gurevitch (1974), which advocates that users of media are active and they use the various media outlets to gratify their needs.