Facebook Fascination of School Children: Some Demographic Insights

Abstract

If I am on an island I would not bother even if there is no one as long as there is Facebook is a common sentiment among the school age children using Facebook in India. They are between the age of 13 and 18 years and 40 % of them are online every other day and 53 % are involved in social networking (Economic Times 2013). India ranks number three in Facebook usage in the entire world and Facebook penetration is as high as 73.3 % among online people. Add to this the fact that 75 % of people in this group are below the age of 35 (Times of India 2012). Communication scholars have extensively used the uses and gratification theory to explain internet and social media usage (Charney and Greenberg 2001; LaRose and Eastin 2004; Sheldon 2008; Tewksbury and Althaus 2000). In the Indian context, there are similar researches (Gadekar et al. 2011; Maniar and Deesawala 2011), but none assess the Facebook usage of school going children particularly the impact of brands on them. This particular cohort is important because they would determine the patterns of social media usage in the future.