Social Media Usage and Its Addiction Level among Generation Y Agricultural Scholars in Meghalaya, India

This study examined Generation Y’s psychological addiction to social media with specific regard to
Research Gate, Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp and Twitter. The addiction was deduced using
Griffiths’ five components that govern behavioral addiction: tolerance, salience, withdrawal, conflict
and relapse. The tenacity of this study was to clinch if Generation Y agricultural scholars’ was in fact
addicted to social media because of their necessity to sustain their connections with peers. The study
reveals that Research Gate was the most widely used social media (95.00 per cent). About ninety four
per cent (93.75 per cent) of the respondents primarily used social media for downloading study
materials. Eighty eight per cent of the respondents had more than five social media account. 76.25
per cent of the respondents spend more than 3 hour on social media. About seventy three per cent
(72.50 per cent) of the respondents spend two hour on social media for agriculturally related issues.
The major advantages of using social media is “exposure to latest knowledge, skills and technology in
research endeavors” followed by “gaining more visibility in research areas” as reported by 95.00 per
cent and 93.75 per cent of the respondents respectively. 68.75 per cent and 7.50 per cent of the
respondents reported high addiction and low addiction on social media, respectively. The results
indicated that Generation-Y agricultural scholars faced constraints towards tolerance, salience,
withdrawal and relapse. However, they face intrapsychic conflict, but not interpersonal conflict. Major
problem associated with social media in dissemination of information is “costly data charge for high
speed internet connectivity” (91.25 percent) being followed by “erratic internet connectivity in the
campus” (90.00 per cent).