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IMPACT OF ONLINE SOCIAL NETWORKING ON YOUTH:

CASE STUDY OF MAURITIUS

Kavi Kumar Khedo Rajen Suntoo

Computer Science and Engineering Department of Social Studies
Department University of Mauritius
University of Mauritius r.suntoo@uom.ac.mu
k.khedo@uom.ac.mu

Sheik Mohammad Roushdat Ally Asslinah Mocktoolah

Elaheebocus
Computer Science and Engineering
Department
University of Mauritius
r.elaheebocus@uom.ac.mu
Computer Science and Engineering
Department
University of Mauritius
ashlinahmee@gmail.com

ABSTRACT
Online social websites have achieved a phenomenal global growth over the last decade,
attracting much attention from researchers worldwide. It is a known fact that young adults
and teenagers are the most avid users of such sites. Based on the findings of several research
studies in the Online Social Networks (OSNs) area, it has been found that these OSN sites are
having a great impact on the lives of young people. But since most of the research works
were carried out in other countries, it was found necessary and important to carry out a study
in Mauritius on the impact of OSNs on the local youth. Such a study would provide an insight
on the influence of OSNs on the behaviour and lifestyle of youngsters in the country. This
paper reports the findings of a research work that was carried out in Mauritius targeting
adolescents aging from 12 to 18 years where 4545 responses were collected through a survey.
It was found that the majority of Mauritian youths were using OSNs on a large scale, mainly
for communication purposes. According to this study, although OSNs have a positive impact
on the adolescents, yet quite a large number of respondents reported having met with
negative experiences on these online sites.

KEYWORDS: Online Social Networks, Mauritian Youth, Communication

1. INTRODUCTION
Online Social Networks (OSNs) have exploded in popularity during the past few years. The
Mauritian population, more particularly the younger generation, has not been spared as most
of them are now connected to OSNs on a daily basis. Since the beginning of the new
millennium, the Mauritian government has put a lot of emphasis on the use of Information
and Communication Technology (ICT) among the youngsters. The number of Internet
subscribers in Mauritius reached 370,000 in the year 2011 as compared to 284,000 in the year
2010 (ICT Indicators Portal), out of a population of 1,288,684 individuals (Population and
Vital Statistics, 2011), representing a penetration rate of 22%. However, it should be noted
that according to the Housing and Population Census (2011), there were 359,015 housing
units in the republic of Mauritius and families tend to share Internet subscription, therefore
putting the penetration rate at a much higher value. With this increase, more and more youths
are getting access to the Internet and most of them have embraced the new trend of joining
OSN sites, causing a change on the way they interact among each other. In the past, young
people were keeping in touch with friends while hanging out at school or meeting up in
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public places while others developed friendships with people they had never met through
pen pal services. OSNs have increased the capacity of teenagers to make and sustain
friendships as well as having more regular communication with family and exploit new
avenues of making online friends. Young people create elaborate profiles of themselves,
connecting with their offline friends, friends of their friends and other users having similar
interests. They then interact among themselves through the writing of comments, sending of
private messages, chatting and other OSN communication features. The rapid adoption of
social networking sites by teenagers around the world has led to many research studies,
focusing on the role of OSNs in teenage social life, the dangers of OSNs particularly for
young people and their impact on the lives of youngsters. In Mauritius, no in depth study has
been carried out on the usage pattern of online social networks among young people and the
impact of OSNs on their education and social life. This study is, therefore, an attempt to do
so.
The first part of the paper deals with a literature review of the impact of OSNs on the
youth. Then follows an explanation on the methodology used for the sake of this article. In
the second part, we shall analyse the findings of survey. Finally, a conclusion based on the
study will be given.

2. BACKGROUND
Given that teenagers from all over the world have adopted social networking sites in their
daily lives, some significant questions were raised concerning the reasons teenagers flock to
these sites and whether their online activities have implications on them. Boyd (2007)
addressed some of these questions and examined the practices of teenagers on social network
sites, focusing mostly on MySpace. MySpace was chosen out of others due to the mass
popularity of the site at that time. Boyd (2007) found that teens mostly joined MySpace to
maintain friendships with their pre-existing friend groups. This observation confirms the
findings of a survey done by Pew Internet (Lenhart & Madden, 2007) stating that 91% of
teens use these sites to stay in touch with their friends they meet frequently. According to
Boyd (2007), gender had an influence in the participation of youngsters on OSN sites:
Younger boys are more likely to participate than younger girls (46 percent vs. 44 percent)
but older girls are far more likely to participate than older boys (70 percent vs. 57 percent).
However, Boyd also noticed that race and social class did not play much role in the usage of
these sites. He also found that that there are two types of non-participants, namely
disenfranchised teens and conscientious objectors. The disenfranchised teens are mainly
those with no Internet access, those whose parents restrict them from using OSNs and the
teens who access Internet in places where OSNs are blocked, for example, in schools. On the
other hand, conscientious objectors refer to those who do not feel that OSN is important for
them or those obedient ones who simply respected their parents safety concerns.
Larsen (2007) carried out a study on an OSN site in Denmark called Arto, which is
mainly focused on youngsters between 13 and 17. The researcher created a profile on Arto so
as to better communicate with the users. A qualitative questionnaire was conducted with the
users who became her friends. She observed that the teenagers mainly use Arto to
communicate with their friends and most of the users spend several hours a day logged on the
website talking about non-virtual things such as boyfriends or girlfriends, school and parents.
Her study showed that what young people do and talk about online is very close to their
offline life and friends. The author also argued that OSN sites like Arto are simply a
continuation of young peoples normal teenage life.
While the media has raised a great hue-and-cry concerning the dangers of OSNs on
youths, Larsen conducted another survey outlining the negative experiences the young OSNs
users faced (Larsen and Ryberg, 2011). The study consisted of an online survey comprising

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primarily open-ended questions to provide an overview about the different experiences that
youths between 12 and 18 years old had through the use of social networks. It was found that
31.5% teenagers expressed that they have had unpleasant experiences, some of which are
threats, harassments, bullying, sexual comments or invitations and spams. However, most of
these respondents drew attention to the fact that they could handle those bad experiences by
blocking or reporting the users who harassed them. Another study carried out by the
Australian Psychological Society (Mathews & Cameron, 2010) investigated on the social and
psychological impact of OSNs and reported that many children and young adults had faced
mostly cyber bullying. Some 28% of the survey participants reported that they had at least
one bad social networking experience and for most respondents, the experiences reflected
unwanted contacts, people posting inappropriate information and online bullying such as
abusive messages and harassments.
While research studies have noted these and other potential risks on OSNs, Tynes
(2008) indicates that online socialisation through online social networks is more beneficial to
the development of adolescents than they are harmful, helping them to learn helpful
perspective-taking, argumentative, decision-making and critical thinking skills. The strongest
point he raised was that OSN users were more globally aware since they had immediate
access to global issues and had the chance to read about global events, thus OSNs acted as
supports for their education. Alongside educational and psychological development, Tynes'
research suggests that teenagers can also benefit emotionally and socially. Networking can
aid adolescents as they explore their identities and can also fulfill the need for social support,
intimacy, and autonomy. Tynes says that teenagers can learn racial and cultural issues while
speaking with peers located on the other side of the country or even overseas.

3. METHODOLOGY AND APPROACH

The objective of this study is to find out the usage patterns of OSN among youths and the
impact OSN has on them. A survey was carried out targeting a population of mostly
teenagers at the secondary level education in Mauritius, aged between 12 and 18. It consisted
both of hard-copy and online questionnaires with primarily close-ended questions. However,
due to low response rate and the inability to control for multiple responses for the online,
web-based questionnaires, only the paper-based questionnaires where eventually used.
Colleges were randomly identified based on them being located either in urban or rural areas
(see Target Population and Sampling section below) and a research assistant was dispatched
to oversee the survey with the collaboration of teachers. This resulted in a very high response
rate among the targeted population and ensured that responses are unique as each student
obtains only one questionnaire to fill in.

3.1 Target Population and Sampling

The survey population included all 80,000 secondary students in Mauritius from 200
colleges. Due to the large size of the targeted population, sampling was carried out so as an
observational study could be performed. In this study, a simple random sampling has been
used where a sample is selected for study from a larger group (a population). Each individual
is chosen entirely by chance and each member of the population has an equal chance of being
included in the sample. For this study, a random sample of 5% of the total population will be
taken. Since Mauritius is geographically small, we have sub-divided the sample into smaller
sub-samples of around 2.5% each; the first sub-sample targeted students attending colleges in
located in rural areas and the other one, for colleges located in urban areas. Comparing the
results obtained from the two sub-samples, it was noticed that both samples yielded the same
outcome and were therefore combined for analysis. The survey lasted for about two months
in 2011. A total of 4545 responses were collected.

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4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

As described in the previous section, a total of 4545 participants responded to the survey.
39.7% of the survey respondents were males (n=1803) and 60.3% were female (n=2739) as
shown in. It should be noted that three (3) respondents chose not to reveal their gender.
It was observed that gender does have an impact in the use of OSNs by teenagers,
with more males (91.1%) declaring that they are members of OSNs than females (82.4%), see
Table 1. The possibility that males who are not members did not participate in the survey was
considered and it was found that the approach taken for administering the survey ensured a
negligible non-response rate among the students in the sampling.

Gender of Respondents
Respondents Region
Male Female Urban Rural

Members 91.1% 82.4% 87.1% 84%

Non-Members 8.9% 17.6% 13% 16%
Table 1. Percentage OSN Membership by Gender and Region

On the other hand, it was found that the regions where young people live did not have
a great influence on the use of OSN sites as Table 1 depicts clearly that 87.1% of OSN users
reside in urban areas while 84% live in rural areas. This re-enforces the vision of the
Mauritian Governments drive to democratise access to the Internet, which in turn is enabling
these youngsters to join OSNs.
An important observation is that most of the Mauritian youths are members of at least
one OSN site, with 85.9% of them stating that they are members of an OSN site. Such a high
penetration rate highlights the now deeply anchored culture of cyber-socialisation in the
younger generations in Mauritius.
According to the survey results (Table 2.), in Mauritius, the most popular OSN site is
Facebook with 97.9% of the respondents being a member. The second most visited OSN site
is Twitter followed by Google+, having 20.8% and 20% of the survey population
respectively. The popularity of Facebook is not surprising since, worldwide, it is already the
leading OSN site boasting more than 845 million monthly active users by the end of the year
2011 according to its news page (Facebook Newsroom, 2012).

OSN Site % OSN Site % OSN Site % OSN Site %

Facebook 97.9 MySpace 11.5 SecondLife 2 Others 0.8
Twitter 20.8 Tagged 6.1 Orkut 1.5
Google+ 20 Flickr 3.3 LinkedIn 1.4
Hi5 16.9 Friendster 3 Ning 1.3
Table 2: OSN Sites Membership Percentage Among Mauritian Youths Using OSNs

More than half of the teenage respondents, 52%, indicated that they access their
preferred OSN sites on a daily basis while 35% access these sites weekly. Others access the
sites around twice monthly (6%) and once a month (7%).
OSN users usually gain access to such sites from a number of places and often, from
multiple place. Therefore, respondents were allowed to provide more than one answer. Most
youngsters use their personal computer at home to access their OSN accounts (87.5%) while
a large number use their personal mobile phones for such activities (42.8%). Only a few

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respondents were accessing OSNs from their schools (3%). A notable 21.1% accesses were
made from public places such as Post Office, Community Centres and Municipalities.
It was also observed that most youngsters were persuaded to join these sites mostly
through peer pressure, with 43.3% of respondents mentioning that it was their friends who
introduced them to OSNs. Siblings amounted to 26.3% while the percentage for other
relatives was 22.1%. As for parents, in only 7% of cases they influenced their children to join
OSN sites. A negligible 1.3%, which included teachers and other people, encouraged
youngsters to make use of OSN.
Most of the youngsters are posting personal information such as birth date (84.3%),
gender (86.4%), photo (68.8%), school (62.9%), activities (69.6%), interests (71.2%) and
address (42.4%). Other information, they shared were mostly relationship status and religion
(0.6%).
The majority of the respondents stated that they share the above information on their
OSN profiles. However, many of them also stated that they set their profiles to private so that
only the users to which they are connected, who are also known as their friends, can view the
information they share or post. It was seen that female teenagers (83.0%) were more likely to
have their profiles set to private than males (68.2%).
Teens have a myriad of reasons to use OSN sites. In this survey, it was found that for
a large number of youngsters, OSN sites allow them to keep in touch with their friends and
family (88.3%). OSN chat facilities are also used for interaction with connected friends
(86.4%). Other purposes for which they use OSN were: to meet new people, that is making
new friends (54.8%), to play games (50.8%) and to share photos, videos and music with their
friends (52.8%). Moreover, it has been noticed that 39% of the respondents use OSNs to
discuss school work. These statistics can be compared to the survey carried out in the US by
Pew Internet (Lenhart & Madden, 2007) where it is stated, Most teens are using the
networks to stay in touch with people they already know, either friends that they see a lot
(91% of social networking teens have done this). 49% of social network users say they use
the networks to make new friends.
From the survey results, it is found that OSNs have a great impact on social
relationships. In order to gauge the surveys participants perception about the effects that the
use of OSNs has on them, some of the main impact factors derived from our initial pilot
survey were used in the questionnaire. These factors were from both negative and positive
categories. Respondents were allowed to provide multiple answers, that is, for example,
someone could indicate that OSN help him/her in a positive way but at the same time affect
him/her negatively; therefore, overlapping of answers is possible. This can be been in the
case of maintain relationships and that of communicate with friends; where the former
pertains mainly to family members, siblings and couples while the latter refers to casual
communication through facilities offered by OSNs between friends.
A large proportion of respondents (77.8%) felt that OSNs help them to communicate
with their friends more easily while 67.8% stating that OSNs allow them to maintain
relationships and make new friends. It is also noticed that some 28.9% of the respondents
found that OSNs help them in their studies. On the other hand, a smaller portion of the survey
population stated that OSN sites have a negative impact on them. Some 27.7% of the
respondents indicated that they waste too much time on OSNs while 19.1% said that OSNs
interfere with their school work.
When asked about negative experiences encountered through OSNs, it was found that
63.4% of the teenagers expressed that they had at least one unpleasant experience. Figure 9
gives more details on the different types of negative experiences. The majority of the
respondents stated that they have had conversations with people using bad languages
(53.5%). Some said that they were being bullied by strangers repeatedly (46.5%). While

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33.4% acknowledged that people spied on their online activities and 15.7% were sent
inappropriate pictures and videos. Some 11.5% of the teens stated that they were threatened
by people online and finally, 2.0% said that their accounts were hacked or were affected by
viruses and spams.
Given that the media has focussed a lot on the dangers of OSNs, parents have become
more conscious about the OSN accounts of their children. It was found that 30% of the
respondents parents have an OSN account while 13.9% of the respondents stated that their
parents know their OSNs passwords.
Some 31.2% of the respondents indicated that their parents monitor their OSN
activities while 41.2% of the respondents said their parents do not give them the permission
to share their personal information on their profiles. As shown in Figure 5, data from several
categories of personal information were shared by the respondents despite their parents
disapproval. This is an aspect that will need to be further explored in future studies. On the
other hand, it can be observed that there is a growing concern on the parts of parents about
privacy issues of their children regarding their OSN profiles.

5. CONCLUSION
The purpose of this research work was to examine the OSNs usage patterns of Mauritian
teenagers and the impact of OSNs on their lives and behaviour. It is found that OSNs are very
popular among the Mauritian youths with the majority of them stating that they are active
members of social networks. The current study, which is the first of its kind in Mauritius, has
shed light on the evolving nature of OSNs among adolescents illustrating the reasons why
they use OSNs, what information they share and the negative impact of OSNs on them. The
findings from this study can be used for further research works on OSNs and its impact on
interpersonal relationship among youngsters, culture, and education.

6. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This research has been funded by the Mauritius Research Council under the Unsolicited
Research Grant Scheme. We thank the Mauritius Research Council for the funding. We
would also like to thank the Ministry of Education for its support to conduct the survey and
experiments.

7. REFERENCES
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Facebook Newsroom (2012) Fact Sheet Statistics.
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Larsen, M.C. (2007) Understanding Social Networking: On Young Peoples Construction
and Co-construction of Identity Online. Internet Research 8.0: Lets Play, Association
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Lenhart, A. & Madden, M. (2007) Teens, Privacy, & Online Social Networks. Pew Internet
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