Correlates of compulsive use of social media and academic performance decrement: A stress-strain-outcome approach

Abstract

Social media users feel overwhelmed by the amount of information inundated by followers and friends they have on various platforms of social media. They devote a lot of time to maintaining these online connections. This causes social media fatigue and poses a serious risk to social media users' wellbeing and productivity. Students could become victims of compulsive social media usage, which could lead to a decline in their academic performance. With the help of the stress-strain-outcome framework, this study attempts to establish the indirect relationship between compulsive use of social media and academic performance decrement via social media fatigue. Further, this study examined the moderating role of self-control (SC) in the relationship between social media fatigue and its negative effect on academic outcomes, which has not been analyzed so far. The effect of moderated mediation was assessed using the PROCESS Macro. The findings of the study suggest the mediating role of social media fatigue between compulsive use of social media and academic performance decrement. Further, the moderating role of self-control was established between social media fatigue and academic performance decline. The originality of the study lies in associating social media fatigue with decrement in academic performance and showing how self-control is helpful in mitigating its effects. This analysis can be insightful for students and educators who tend to ignore the negative impact of students' over-reliance on social media on their academic performance. The findings suggest that social media overuse by students requires self-regulation and requires careful scrutiny by educators in creating appropriate solutions to lessen social media's detrimental influence on higher education. The research provides useful recommendations for self-control on social media usage behavior.