RESUMO
Background: Explosive growth of Social Networking Sites (SNS) have impacted every sphere of a youthslife be it academics or personal relationships. There has been an escalation of research worldwide in thisarea though it is negligible in India. The present research seeks to fulfil this lacuna by studying the impactof SNS use on sleep, academic achievement, concentration, self esteem and personal relationships onIndian youth.Methodology: The sample consisted of students from junior and degree colleges in Mumbai belonging tothe age group of 16 to 22 years, equal number of male and female students was selected. They wereadministered a self-formulated questionnaire consisting of 24 questions, which measured their SNS usehabits and its impact on sleep, academics, concentration, self esteem and social relationships in terms ofgender differences and education level. The scores obtained were subjected to ‘t’ test. A significant ‘t’ valueof was found for gender differences but not for junior and degree college students.Results: Results indicated that the bio-psychosocial factors of males were affected more by SNS use thanthe females and there was no difference in the impact of bio-psychosocial factors of junior and degreecollege students who were SNS users. The mean scores were 16.60, 16.32 and 15.64 foracademics/sleep/concentration, relationship and self esteem respectively. Hence the maximum impact ofSNS use was seen on academic/sleep/concentration followed by relationship and lastly self esteem.Conclusions: Thus, the burgeoning nature of SNS does impact the youth in some aspects of their life as ithas become a core of all the forms of communication