Browsing by Author "Eira, Emma"

Goals. The purpose of this study was to find out what kind of social media groups can be identified among high school students and what kind of gender differences exist in the use of social media. This study also examined whether the social media user groups differ in self-esteem and how gender and socioeconomic background are related to the relationship between social media use and self-esteem. It is important to examine adolescents’ social media user habits in order to gain more detailed information about the association between adolescents’ social media use and self-esteem. Methods. The data (N = 1203) was collected from high school students in 34 Helsinki schools in spring 2018. Participants filled in questionnaires that measured social media use, self-esteem and questions regarding family background. Gender differences in social media usage were evaluated with Independent Samples t-Test and the relationship between with the preliminary variables were analyzed using Pearsons’ correlation factors. Respondents were divided into groups based on participation in social media by using the Two Step Cluster analysis. One-way analysis of variance examined whether groups differed in self-esteem. The one-way analysis of variance also examined whether socioeconomic background and gender influence how user groups differ in self-esteem. Results and conclusions. Four distinct groups were identified from the data: socially networked, knowledge-oriented, academically oriented, and active users. Differences in the use of social media by girls and boys were observed. Girls were found to use more social media for social networking compared to boys. Boys, in turn, were found to use more social media for knowledge-oriented and academically oriented purposes than girls. In addition, gender differences in the distribution of social media user groups were examined. The group of active users and socially networked were more popular among girls, while the knowledge-oriented and academically oriented groups were more popular among boys than girls. The group of active users was the largest group in the material and the most popular user group among girls and boys. Based on this, it can be stated that most girls and boys use digital media in a very diverse way. Social media user groups were not found to differ significantly in self-esteem, and gender or socioeconomic background did not explain the differences in user groups in self-esteem.