USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS BY THE ENGINEERING FACULTIES AND STUDENTS IN PUDUCHERRY – A SURVEY

The paper presents the extent of utilization of social media platforms by the engineering faculties and students in Puducherry through a survey conducted with 551 respondents from nine engineering colleges. The study revealed that 91.05 percent of the total respondents made use of Skype; only 12.34 percent of the respondents checked the analytics of social media activities daily; 7.8 of the respondents used SM platforms very frequently, and 22.87 percent frequently. Interestingly, it was found that 90.41 percent of the faculty respondents made use of SM platforms for Academic purposes while 98.12 percent of the students made use of SM platforms for Sharing photos and videos. It was also opined that the use of social media platforms has positively influenced the respondents. However, a good number of respondents have also revealed that there was negative influence on the use of social media platforms