Research On The Connections Between The Use Of Social Media And Subjective Well-being Of University Students: A Comparison Of Qzone And Sina Weibo

Social media refers to those Internet tools which provide platforms for people to share theirviews, thoughts, experience and ideas about lives. What is more, through social media, people areable to form certain groups not only online but also off-line. With the development and innovationof communication technology as well as the continuously change of requirements in newcommunication tools, social media has caught wide attention and brought great impacts in bothforeign and domestic society. To name a few, FACEBOOK, Twitter, Google+and Wikipedia aretypical representatives of social media in western countries while in China, Qzone, RenRen.com,Baidu PostBar and Sina Weibo are some of the famous and influential social media.The appearance of social media has changed people’s life and interaction modelfundamentally: for one thing, the development of Internet and social media has broken down theboundaries in both time and space in social interaction among people. With social media, peoplehave more convenient, opener and more personalized ways of communication which providespeople with more freedom in social contacts. Even in different places, people could communicatewith their friends and families easily thanks to social media and this would greatly reduce people’sfeeling about loneliness and alienation. For another thing, along with the progress in mobileinternet and the reforms in various smart phones, people are becoming increasingly used to onlinesocial interaction with social media. That is to say, we could not ignore the fact thatcommunication “between people-and-computer/mobile phones” is gradually impacting thecommunication “between people-and-people”. In addition, some internet users are more inclinedto online communication rather than real-life interaction and some experts worry that this wouldbring about negative effects on people in long term regards of their real social skills. Whethersocial media would impact people’s mental health also becomes a common social anxiety ingradual.According to some related researches, it is considered that college student is a significantcomponent of social media users in China. To begin with, college student makes up a considerablepart of Chinese netizens and Internet is increasingly becoming college student’s crucial tool andpart in their daily study, work and life activities. Moreover, social media is not only a significantpart and trend in current and future development of Internet, it is also a popular and eveninevitable part of Internet tools among college students. It goes without saying that the use of social media would bring certain impacts on college students’ real lives. Furthermore, subjectivewell-being has been a heated topic in social science in the past few years. With the improvementof people’s living standards, people not only concerns about the material lives, they also pay moreattention to life of mind. Beyond that, in recent years there have been some tragedies which aremainly caused by mental and psychological problems among college students in Chineseuniversities and this again draws people’s attention to college students’ mental health andwell-being.Based on the contexts mentioned above, in this essay, I am going to explore the connectionbetween use of social media (take Qzone and Sina Weibo as examples) and college-student users’subjective well-being with two main research methods: questionnaire and interviews. There aresome main research findings in this essay:(1) When using different social media, college students’intensity and effects of utilization, social circle and the level of presented real personalinformation are diverse;(2) In general, college students have a relatively high level of lifesatisfaction and their emotion is relatively positive;(3) College student’s subjective well-beingis negatively related with the intensity of utilization of social media while it is positively relatedwith the effects of utilization.(4) Both the utilization effects of Qzone and Sina Weibo are inpositive relationship with college student’s subjective well-being but the relationship with lifesatisfaction, positive emotion and negative emotion is diverse.