The Influence Of Social Media Use On University Studengts’ Social Mentality

Social mentality is the macro-social state of mind that is dispersed in the whole society or social groups in a certain period,and it is the sum of social needs,emotions,social cognition,values and behavior intentions within various social groups.Social mentality is the "barometer" of social development,which plays an imperceptible role in political development and social stability.As the backbone of social development,it is particularly important to know the characteristics of university students’ social mentality,and to figure out its factors.With the advancement of social media,it has become an indispensable tool in the daily life of university students,so their influence on university students’ social mentality shall not be ignored.At present,domestic researches on university students’ social mentality mainly focus on the characteristics of university students’ social mentality and the cultivation method of university students’ good social mentality in a certain period.The research involving social media usage and university students’ social mentality is not so sufficient.From the perspective of Journalism and Communication,the article attempts to use questionnaire survey methods of quantitative research,combine with in-depth interviews of qualitative research,taking university students as subjects,to explore the impact of social media usage on their social mentality.Social media use intensity,function,and motivation of using are the main independent variables in this study.While the dependent variables are the five dimensions of social mentality: social needs,social cognition,social emotions,social values,and social behavior intensions.The following conclusions have been drawn in the research:(1)The impact of social media use intensity,use function,and use motivation on the dimensions of social mentality is very significant,and social media use motivation has the greatest impact,followed by use function and intensity;(2)The motivation to obtain information has the greatest influence,followed by interpersonal communication,self-expression and social identity,and the less important influence is the motivation of entertainment;(3)In all the use functions,the external contact function has a greater impact on all dimensions of social mentality compared with the self-activity and network action functions;(4)Among all use intensity factors,continuing using and daily using time of social media have a certain impact on all dimensions of social mentality;(5)Demographic variables will influence social mentality,but the impact is not significant: male has a stronger sense of social security,female and doctoral groups have a stronger sense of social justice.The higher the education,the lower the sense of pleasure,the stronger the sense of anxiety.Men’s apathy is more obvious than women’s;Boys’ love attitudes are more conservative,but consumption ideas are more forward.Medical,science and engineering majors,master’s degree students’ love attitudes are also more conservative.In addition,the influence mechanism of social media use on university students’ social mentality are summarized as follows:(1)the guidance of agenda setting of social media;(2)the strengthening effects of independent choice of information and the recommendation of algorithms;(3)the values of opinion leaders;(4)the influence of other people in the public sphere.