(Faculty of Humanities and Sciences, SLIIT, 2023-11-01) Perera, R; Abeysinghe, N; Galappaththi, K
Envy is a complex emotion studied recently,
especially with the impact of social media. This
study explored the dualistic nature of social media
envy in Sri Lankan undergraduates from a nonstate
university. Using a quantitative design, data
from 155 participants were collected via Google
Forms and analysed with Spearman’s Rank test.
Results indicated statistically significant positive
moderate relationships between social media
usage and both benign envy and malicious envy.
However, social media only accounted for 20% of
benign envy and 8.8% of malicious envy, suggesting
it’s only one of many contributors. Furthermore,
the association between social media usage and
benign envy was stronger than that with malicious
envy, implying social media envy may be less
severe than perceived in Sri Lanka. The study
acknowledges limitations, such as sample size and
focus on one university. Future research should
address these limitations and explore the dualistic
nature of social media envy in different populations
and contexts. Overall, the study emphasises
the need to understand the complexity of envy
and how social media can amplify or alleviate
it. Findings have implications for social media
usage, regulation, and interventions promoting
emotional well-being.
