Browsing by Author "Guo, Huishan"

Currently, Internet-based social media have an increased influence on society, and the use of social media has penetrated into every aspect of life. Because of online use of social media, individuals are connected through screen virtually but isolated from each other physically. Previous conventional offline social life is decreasing and a new psychological problem arises: loneliness. Empirical studies found that despite the fact that this generation has more devices and technologies that help people to stay connected, the feeling of loneliness in the 21st century is the highest of all times so far. This thesis will combine past empirical studies of the relevant field with the theory of use and gratification, aiming to identify the relationship between use of social media and loneliness. This exploratory study was carried out in the University of Helsinki through the online survey, Facebook was chosen as an example of social media that is widely used among university students, and 112 valid survey samples were collected. Through quantitative research method, four major findings are found: (1) Loneliness is positively correlated with Facebook motivation, which can be interpreted as loneliness motivates people to use Facebook; (2) Loneliness is negatively correlated with the number of Facebook friends, which indicates that a larger social network size can combat loneliness; (3) Females use Facebook more intensively than males than people who prefer not to say their gender; (4) Asian/Pacific islander ethnicity group shows the highest motivation to use Facebook, followed by white ethnicity and then others.