Extent of Digital Life and Social Well-being of College Students

Abstract

With the advance of technology, life has become comfortable as we move to the digital world of interconnectedness with devices and apps which have become a sine quo non-factor in today’s world. A life without internet and mobile phone is unthinkable. So, we are hooked to our smartphones and are continually interconnected with our smartphones and computers. With the current technologies continuously being designed to fulfil all our physical and emotional needs, there appears to be no excuse not to join the digital bandwagon. Consequently, digital media are integrated into the fabric of young people's lives today. This reality raises questions about the varied impacts of regular interaction on digital technologies, social networking sites, contact with friends and relatives through text messages and apps. Hence media literacy, digital skills and digital citizenship have become a topic of growing importance in the academic field, as well as among policy-makers and practitioners. The focus of this research is to know the forms of technology used in the digital life of young people, to determine the degree to which digital technology has become part of today's youth life and to examine the level of positive and negative impacts on the digital life of college youth. The research was undertaken on 242 undergraduate students, to study their digital life.  From the main findings of the study, it was inferred that more than two- third (67.6%) of the respondents expressed a higher level of online digital activity, while the rest had a lower level of involvement and low level of social well-being.