The Relationship between Psychological Well-being and Media Use of College Students in Taiwan

This study aims to examine the relationship between media use and psychological well-being of college students in Taiwan. Employing a questionnaire survey of college students in Taiwan, Ryff’s (1989) scale of psychological well-being, and a media use questionnaire, ten kinds of media use behaviors (watching TV, playing online games, online chatting, reading books, watching movies, watching TV news, reading newspaper news, reading online news, online information searching, and online shopping) are predicted by the six dimensions (autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relations with others, purpose in life, and selfacceptance) of psychological well- being with gender controlled as an intervening variable. Data were analyzed with t tests and multiple regression analysis. Based on the findings of a survey of 467 college students, three conclusions are made. First, males and females show different patterns in terms of the relationships between their psychological well-being and media use behavior. Second, since different media activities have different characteristics, each media use behavior correlates with different dimension of psychological well-being. Third, purpose in life is the best predictor of all the six psychological well-being dimensions. In addition, personal growth is the only significant predictor of how often and how long female students play online games.