Profiles of undergraduates’ networks addiction: Difference in academic procrastination and performance

Abstract

Social networks are a source of distraction in personal, academic, and professional tasks. In the university context, they can lead to academic procrastination behaviour and undermine students’ academic performance. The aims of this study are a) to identify profiles of students with similar values in excessive use, lack of control and obsession with social networks, and b) analyse whether there are significant differences in procrastination behaviours and academic performance of the identified profiles. A total of 1784 students from 24 Spanish universities took part in the study. The Social Network Addiction Questionnaire and the Spanish version of the Procrastination Assessment Scale-Student test were used. Profiles were identified through Latent Profile Analysis and differences between groups were analysed through the three-step Bolck-Croon-Hagenaars method. The results showed three profiles regarding the excessive use of social networks: low addiction, moderate addiction and high addiction. Significant differences were found between the three latent profiles in academic procrastination, showing that the higher the addiction to social networks, the higher the procrastination behaviour. However, there were no significant differences between the groups with respect to academic performance. In conclusion, although the addiction to social networks is related to procrastination behaviour, it is considered that they could be a useful resource in the initial training process of undergraduates.