Abstract:

What people do when they are online particularly during the COVID-19? It is a question that remains the same but the answers are different. In the present world, social media plays a vital role in all the segments of life. People use social media for several purposes. The behavioral patterns of people give birth to social and psychological dynamics of a 'hyper-real world'. This study investigates the behavioral patterns and the usage of social media in Pakistan during the COVID-19. A mixed-method approach vis-a-vis qualitative in the form of focus groups and interviews while quantitative in the form of a survey was used to collect the data. The focus Group Discussion and interviews were analyzed using NVIVO, and SPSS was employed to analyze the survey data. The findings indicate that majority of the respondents use social media for several purposes including seeking information, sharing opinions, interacting with others, watching content for fun, etc. All these activities when combined transform them into a 'Virtual Behavior' of the online users. It is recommended that netizens must train themselves to avoid the negative effects of social media use. As it was observed during the pandemic, people spent more time on social media than ever before, fake news and misinformation were other problems, and therefore, users firstly must self-regulate their behavior and then also equip themselves to encounter such negative aspects of social media usage.

Keywords: