International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications 1 ISSN 2250-3153 www.ijsrp.org INFLUENCE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN DEVELOPING SOCIAL ANXIETY: A STUDY OF UNIVERSITY STUDENTS IN LAHORE Fizzah Riaz * , Kashif Ishaq ** , Arshad Abbasi ** * Department of Sociology, University of Management and Technology ** Department of Social Work, University of the Punjab Abstract- Now a day’s people have modern ways to interact with one another, they can communicate easily through social media with one another. With a lot of advantages social media has also disadvantages as social anxiety is one of them. Social anxiety is the reason of depression, it negatively effects physically, psychologically and increase complexity. These all causes are interlinked. To study about the social anxiety among students, Social media needs to aware the youth about the harmful aspects of it. Purposive sampling technique was used, students were selected who are engaged with social media. Total number of respondents are 50 and all are undergraduate regular students. Data collected through survey method. According to the research findings, there is no correlation between social media and social anxiety. Which means social media is not playing any role in developing social anxiety among students. Social anxiety may occur in situations, but in this research is social media don’t develop the social anxiety. The purpose of this study is to find the relationship between social media and social anxiety. This study revealed that there is no association between social media and social anxiety among the students of social work department Punjab University. Index Terms- Feeling of illness, Level of confidence, Social Media, Social anxiety I. INTRODUCTION To study about the social anxiety among students, Social media is a way of representing the ties that bind us in the form of relationships (Coiera .E. 2013). Everything has sunny side and also the darker side, now here highlighted the darker side of social media. Before social media, youth has never opportunities to bring their self-presentation to perfection. With the use of modern technology as they become more socialized. (Valkenburg M. P. 2017). In the case anything shares through media set its direction and a motive to aware the people. Most of the students are the target of anxiety that’s why I chose the youth as per content. Nowadays our youth is broad minded and they have several ways to the use of things, either these are positive or negative. Electronic media play a vital role to develop social anxiety among students. With the passage of time we are more connected with the outer world and connect with a lot of people. This communication introduces ourselves with the latest technology, we want to access. Social media are those devices which are socially used. The invention of the computer is to share of resources with others and the data also available in hard copy and take more space to store that is easy to store in soft copy through the computer. Particularly the sharing of data easily possible through internet. Communicate with others is also possible through internet. This is stage of modern invention (Enrikson J. 1998). Social media has transformed mass communication from the monopoly of the multi-directional communication average of the customary mass media, e.g (printing press, television, radio) to multi-directional communication where everyone can participate. (Wyrwoll .C. 2014). Anxiety is a persistent problem in multiple fields of study (Daniel .M. 2012). In 1980, SAD (social anxiety disorder) was legitimately documented as a psychiatric condition - defined by an extreme fear and prevention of social situations, where there is probable for valuation or denial by others (Kashdan B. T. & McKnight, 2010). Depression is common now in youth and it has many reasons and all of those one of them is social media. Hesitate to communicate with others through face to face communication. Abilities are less to judge the people through their expressions. According to Saleem A. (2016) Social anxiety is the blend of fear, anxiety and concern that people experience when they expect being unable to make a positive impression on others, particularly in meetings with strangers in public settings. Social anxiety is linked with the observation which comes dealing with others face to face interaction. (Donna J. June 2007) Social anxieties are based upon the feelings of vulnerability, restlessness, shyness or fears to interact with others, in this fast era, everybody becomes smart or in touch with others through technology but this technology prevent anxiety among youth. The production of 'social anxiety' between these groups which resulted in a tendency to the use of 'scapegoats' onto which troubling experiences were deep (Parton .N. 2018). Social anxiety is the reasoning of depression, it effects physically and psychologically both and prevention of complexity, these all is interlinked. When we are not confident to talk everyone directly that have some psychological impacts which is psychologically have fear to talk with others Social interaction is when we meet with people or connect with people on the basis