Manasi Varma
Image credits: Interesting Engineering
NBC Polls Reveals Interesting Findings on Social Media Use
Well known news platform NBC News carried out a poll in the United States between April 17-20, garnering responses on how Americans perceive social media sites, and exploring how much time they spend across the same. Some of the results of the poll were surprising, and some, not-so-surprising. But one thing that remains certain is that the perceptions of people regarding social networking sites haven’t changed significantly from 2018 and 2019.
Image Credits: Wikipedia
Around 66 percent of the people surveyed (constituting about two-thirds of the total) admitted that they check into their social accounts at least once a day. However, most of them also said that they believe that the same social media sites, including the likes of Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, among others, do more to tear a nation apart, rather than to bring people closer, the aim that they began with, in the first place.
Social Media Breaks Nation Apart
To this cause, more than 64 percent of the people surveyed agreed that using social media platforms on a daily basis has more ill effects on society than good. The demographics of this 64% group is interesting, with a whopping 77% Republicans siding with it, along with 54% Democrats, as well as 65% independents. The white population of the States seems to be less in favour of social sites, as over 70% of the whites expressed their weariness of its ability to cause rifts between people. Around 56% of the Latino population surveyed had similar views. In terms of age, it seems that the young adult and elderly populations are more aware of the negative impacts of heavy use of social media, with an impressive 61 and 71%, respectively, admitting that social media use can hurt relations in the long run. This is in sharp contrast with the meagre 27% of the adult population that prefers to see social media as non-divisive.
An interesting finding comes in the form of the Black respondents of the poll, 42% of whom hold that social media has divisive effects, while 40% feel that it does more to bring people together.
The survey also explored the quality of life section of social media use, and the results were quite different. Only 37% of the population (and that too, mostly males, Republicans, and those without an official college degree) feels that social media has a bad impact on the quality of their lives, while 49% feel that their lives are better with social media platforms in them (mainly including women, Democrats, and college-goers).
Kids Spending More Time on Screens
The poll also delved into whether the screen time of children had increased over the pandemic, with 54% of the parents admitting to an rise in screen time by their kids. Only 4% of the parents said that their kids’ screen time had reduced, while 38% said it remained the same. These findings seem to be much more unprecedented as compared to the views on social media.