Browsing social media sites portrays every person is leading a worthier life than your own. When a person feels that they are generally worse off than the people they associate with or the standards set by the society they live in, this will result in comparison, at that point, relative deprivation may emerge. Ordinarily, there will always be others who can have more. Nevertheless, even those people who can achieve beyond may sometime feel deprived since they cannot stop to compare themselves and what they have. People may feel deprivation since there is no contentment. Hence, the objective of this study is to determine the perception of the Philippine College of Science and Technology’s criminology students to relative deprivation using social media sites. The study used a qualitative research design specifically an exploratory approach. Consequently, the interview was aided by an interview guide which is semi structured in nature and the data gathered were analyzed using qualitative content analysis method. As a result, the perception of the participants in comparing themselves to others based on their social media exposure is discontentment, envy, and motivation. Moreover, it was concluded that relative deprivation can assist individuals in recognizing their potential and motivating them to reach on the possessions or feelings they feel deprived of which can be harnessed and used for creating positive outcomes. However, relative deprivation does have certain negative impacts such as discontentment and envy, it served as a motivating factor for the participants to strive more.

Keywords : Perception, Relative Deprivation, Social Media Sites, Students.