The Perceived Impact of Facebook Likes and Shares on Self-esteem among College Students

The focus of this study is about the impact of Facebook likes and shares to the students’ selfesteem. The study investigated the respondents’ perception about receiving and not getting likes and shares in Facebook and what are the impact of Facebook likes and shares to the respondents’ self-esteem. This quantitative research utilized the descriptive quantitative research design. The researcher chose 100 respondents from the College of Arts and Sciences through purposive random sampling technique for the survey conducted. Research questionnaires were distributed and answered by respondents contained varied kinds of questions in the form of Likert scales. The formula utilized in the analysis of data is WAM or Weighted Arithmetic Mean. The respondents of this study are mostly below 23 years old, most of them are male, nearly all of them are 4th year college students and the majority of them use Facebook only 2 – 3 hours per day. The respondents’ perception towards likes and shares revealed overall positive, however, some of the respondents disagree that likes and shares have value to them, especially if receiving a lot of likes and shares make them feel better known and worthy. Those who agreed that likes and shares are important hold positive meanings to receiving likes and shares. Most of the respondents agreed that receiving likes and shares in Facebook positively impact their selfesteem in terms of social support, happiness and self-positive image. On the other hand, the majority of them strongly disagree that not getting likes and shares in Facebook negatively impact their self-esteem in terms of jealousy, feelings of isolation and body image disturbance. Also, the age, gender, year level of the respondents and hours they spent in using Facebook revealed that there is no significant difference in the perception towards receiving and not getting likes and shares and its impact to the respondents’ self-esteem