The Impact of Social Media on the Personality Trait of Undergraduates students: A Descriptive Analytical Approach

Abstract

Personality development of an individual is a continuous process that involves multiple methods and techniques. Study on a person’s personality is conducted by examining inherited and adopted personality traits during their life span. Higher education institutes play a vital role in flourishing student’s personality and significant revolution is noticed by the researchers in this regard. Individual’s personality is being affected by use of social media including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and many more. Facebook (FB) is widely used as an online social network to communicate with other individuals. It is observed that students are also users of FB for learning, interacting, recreating and browsing purposes. Our research falls in the same dimension to study student’s personality traits through their FB use and eventually analyze the change in their personality. For the same, four higher education institutes of Pakistan located in Lahore are targeted. Data is collected for five years from under graduate students from 2015-2019. It has two main purpose; firstly, to present analytical results and secondly, to examine the changes in person’s personality traits (PT) during degree program at the university. Data is collected from FB profiles through an application and Big Five Personality Trait model is used to conduct personality assessment. Five PT are studied namely; extraversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism. Results interpret the direct relationship of the personality trait with the use of FB and it has shown increased impact on student’s personality over the progress of the degree program. Students of all four universities came up with almost identical results that depict the similar role of an institute in the development of the student’s personality. Research findings contribute towards data science by proving analytical data on student’s personality traits. Also, it acts as guide for educational institutes to deeply cope with targeted PT of a student. Eventually, it facilitates the students to use OSN more effectively in development of their positive personality.