The youth in present day India is the first generation to grow up within a world of pervasive technology. While several writers applaud these social network sites (SNSs) for transforming the social landscape of India, recent research is beginning to examine the destructive role of these SNSs. The purpose of this paper is to explore whether and to what extent social media contributes to decline in well-being, addictive behavior and other harmful social effects.,In the first phase, a structured questionnaire was sent via e-mail to 114 students. The second stage embraced an exploratory qualitative approach with in-depth interviews and reflections. As part of the third stage, the author devoted a lot of time reading the blogs and posts of the youth.,The analysis of qualitative data is presented in three major themes: patterns of usage, nature of online friendships and threat to well-being. Some of the respondents did experience “addiction-like” symptoms. It can be deduced that the respondents are not addicted to the medium per se; they are cultivating an addiction to certain activities they carry out online.,Indian newspapers have recently reported several cases how social media can mislead and corrupt the youth and some of these cases have ended in tragedy. This kind of obsessive behavior is extremely dangerous to the minds which are otherwise actually intelligent and ought to be stopped.,There is no doubt that the Indian youth is developing a dependence on this technological advance that fuses people all over the world. We are still in the infant stages of understanding these issues in the Indian context. This study adds value to the negligible empirical evidence in India till date.

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社交网络的使用与青年福祉：印度的一项研究

今天的印度青年是在普及技术世界中成长的第一代人。尽管一些作家赞扬这些社交网站（SNS）改变了印度的社会格局，但最近的研究开始研究这些SNS的破坏性作用。本文的目的是探讨社交媒体是否以及在何种程度上导致幸福感，成瘾行为和其他有害的社会影响的下降。在第一阶段，通过电子邮件向114名学生发送了结构化问卷。第二阶段采用了探索性的定性方法，并进行了深入的访谈和反思。作为第三阶段的一部分，作者花了大量时间阅读青少年的博客和帖子。定性数据的分析主要表现为三个主题：使用方式，在线友谊的性质和对幸福感的威胁。一些受访者确实经历了“成瘾状”的症状。可以推断出，受访者本身并不沉迷于媒介。他们正在培养对在网上进行的某些活动的依赖。印度报纸最近报道了几起社交媒体如何误导和腐蚀青年的案例，其中一些案例以悲剧告终。这种强迫行为对本来实际上是聪明的人应该停止的头脑是极其危险的。毫无疑问，印度青年正在对这种融合世界各地人们的技术进步形成依赖性。在印度的背景下，我们仍处于了解这些问题的初期阶段。