Ethics and Use of Social Media: A Study of Young Mobile Phone Users

Social media is quite new for its users. The media is new, its use, its users, the context/situations in which it is being used, the purpose for which it is being used, in a way everything related to it is new. One thing which is becoming clear with the increasing use of social media is that it is being used more as an interpersonal medium. Presently, society is used to mass media, use of social media as a (inter) personal medium is giving rise to new situations and questions. Owing to its widespread use, one question which needs to be asked is whether there is a need to evolve some norms to use social media like where it should be used, how it should be used etc. In other words, is there a need to evolve ethics for use of social media? But to whom does this question be put forward? As social media is used largely for personal use, the norms also need to be defined by users themselves. This study attempted to put this question to users and asked if yes, what these ethics should be? A survey was conducted in the age group of 18–24 years. Nearly 87% of the respondents said that there is a need to evolve ethics to use social media. For this article, social media is defined as a mobile phone with or without facility of internet.