S'pore youths spending more time online: study

SJS6638 SG

Singapore youths spend an average of 5.5 hours on social media daily. (Yahoo! file photo)

Youths in Singapore are spending more time online now than ever.

The average number of hours youths in the country spend online daily has gone up from 4.8 hours in 2011 to 5.5 hours last year, a study by Singapore Polytechnic found.

Results of the annual study, conducted in June last year, were based on person-administered surveys with 820 youths, defined as those aged between 15 and 35 years old.

The top five activities online include reading online content, viewing photos and videos, commenting and replying others, chatting online and sharing or posting content.

What fo youths do on social media? (Image by Singapore Polytechnic)

The study also found that the youths with high levels of well-being spend less time online daily at 5.4 hours compared to people who have low levels of well-being at 6 hours.

Well-being, in this study, is measured through health, social life, education and job opportunities, freedom of expression, level of human rights, personal safety and sense of belonging. About 86 per cent of respondents ranked high on level of well-being, while about 14 per cent of respondents ranked low.

Respondents were also asked to rate their level of happiness, with the majority of respondents (85 per cent) rating themselves to be generally somewhat happy.

Happy respondents were also found to have spent less time online, clocking an average of 5.4 hours while unhappy respondents clocked an average of 5.8 hours daily.

Communicating face-to-face vs on social media

The study also showed that youths prefer to communicate on social media with their friends and face-to-face with their family members. Younger respondents spend more time online as compared to the older respondents.

Singaporean youth prefer communicating with their friends online as compared to their family. (Image from Singapore …

However, there is a small percentage of youth who do not communicate face-to face at all with people around them.

5.2 per cent or about 42 respondents said they do not communicate in person with their schoolmates or colleagues on a daily basis. 3 per cent and 1.7 per cent of respondents said the same about their family and friends respectively.

“Personally, the most surprising thing from this survey is that there are actually people who do not communicate with their family, friends or schoolmates,” said 18-year-old Rachael Wong, who worked on the study with her schoolmates.

We see friends and family every day and there are still people who don’t communicate with them face to face, it doesn’t make sense, Wong added.

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Pros and cons.

Sometimes it is necessary to have it face to face communication.

Spending more time on social media to know the shit and in and out of the pay and pay is good ................

SJS6638 SG

FireIce SG

im sure.

just look at the replies in this forums.

and other forums

Clivebenss SG

fifi also a kid?

SJS6638 SG

DailyFreeGames.com SG

fifi also a kid?

she auntie liao.

Clivebenss SG

she auntie liao.

auntie fifi.

SJS6638 SG

Clivebenss SG

hairy legs.

^Acid^ aka s|aO^eH~ SG

Welcome to the new age when next time u go war, just bring along ur iPad can liao...

no need guns or bullet anymore, anything settle on the internet

FireIce SG

flame war

SevenEleven SG

ah pek also spending more time online also Sad

Clivebenss SG

ah pek also spending more time online also Sad

some like looking for hairy legs.

FireIce SG

better than be out there creating trouble.......

Clivebenss SG

Ragazza0109 SG

We see friends and family every day and there are still people who don’t communicate with them face to face, it doesn’t make sense, Wong added.

This is sad.

Labeautecart SG

agreed.

Czach SG

It's not sad that more people are spending time online, since we got new technology might as well use it. What is really sad is what they use it for, mainly reading of content and looking at pictures. I can assume that the content they read is definitely random jokes and memes and random articles, maybe some political but mostly entertainment.

It's the age of the internet and easy information, theres tons of stuff that can be learned that people don't learn. Read up on music theory, sociology, psychology, philosophy, poetry, literature, art theory, political science, science, mathematics, world affairs, economics, history and programming. Read up on Nietzsche,Turing, Karl Marx, Allen Ginsberg, David Foster Wallace, Hunter S Thompson, Betrand Russell, Soren Kierkegaard, Kong Zi, Meng Zi, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Read up on structuralism, russian formalism, existentialism, solipsism, nihilism, dadaism, romanticism, number theory and java programming. Listen to Bach, Mingus, Coltrane, Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich, Bartok, Dizzy Gillespie and Louis Armstrong, Read up and learn 'chim' things and don't let your mind rot by spending too much time looking at pictures of cats. Amen.

Clivebenss SG

Go out and get some sun and fun. Good for health.

croco2006 SG

so people find their existence due to online - else they just wallow into their own worlds...