An Association between Social Media Addiction and Academic Performance among Undergraduate Nursing Students from IIUM Kuantan

Abstract

Objective: Social media is becoming more popular among university and college students. Therefore, it is urgent to find out what effect social media have on their users and, in a more specific way, how the use of social media affects the academic performance of nursing students at IIUM since no studies have been conducted among the students to investigate the linkage between social media usage and their academic performance. Considering the key role of nursing students in promoting the quality of physical and mental health in society, this study aims to find the association between social media addiction and the academic performance of nursing students. Methods: A quantitative cross-sectional study with convenience sampling method was conducted among 243 nursing students at IIUM Kuantan Campus, from March 2022 to June 2022. Data were gathered by using Google Form survey and distributed to all undergraduate nursing students that fit into inclusion criteria of this study. The questionnaire consisted of two sections which are Section A and Section B. Section A consisted of 6 questions exploring students’ sociodemographic information (gender, year of study, current GPA, which platform of social media mostly use, the number of hours spent for studying in a week (in hour) and the number of hours spent for accessing the social media in a week (in hour). Section B questionnaire adapted from Social Media Addiction Scale- Student Form (SMAS-SF) was used to determine the level of social media addiction of an individual. Results: Nursing students of IIUM Kuantan have moderate level of social media addiction with mean score of 87.56 (SD=17.633). The majority of nursing students IIUM Kuantan are excellent in their academic performance as most of them are classified into First Class and Second Class (Upper) with average CGPA of 3.46 (SD= 0.2322). Majority chose WhatsApp (53.9%) as their social media platform of mostly used and only 2.5% of respondent chose Facebook. ............