What’s your snapchat? : I’ll be watching you

Abstract

Introduction: Social media is an ever-changing human interaction, especially when it comes to relationships and break-ups. The main objective of this research study was to understand if social media was causing negative affects in its users and if it was causing people to engage in behaviours similar to stalking through normalization of following behaviours promoted by social networking sites and social learning. Methods: To test this hypothesis, a sample of 101 Saint Mary’s University students took part in an online survey that contained scales such as the DASS 21, The Diane Poole Attachment Scale and a number of other questions designed to understand participant demographics and social media usage. Results: The results of this study found that students were not engaging in following and/or stalking-type behaviours post break-up, thus the hypothesis was not supported. The results did show that 70% of participants ranked in the moderate range on the DASS and that they have both secure/anxious-ambivalent styles of attachment. Conclusion: This thesis ends with a discussion of possible reasons for such results. Limitations of this study were the sample only including individuals of the ages of 19-31 and that the sample only included students at a single university. The future direction of this study could include conducting the same survey in five years to see if the results may shifted.