Social Media Usage Intensity and Academic Performance among Undergraduate Students in Saudi Arabia

Abdullah S Alshalawi

doi:10.30935/cedtech/11711

Abstract

As the statistics show, use of social media networks (SMNs) are very common among college students worldwide. According to a report by Hootsuite, Saudi Arabia was ranked as the number-one country in the growth of social media users. With the advancement of technology and internet speed, investigating how SMNs affect students has become an absolute necessity. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the influence of social media networks (SMNs) on the academic performance of undergraduate students across the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, taking gender differences into account. An invitation email to participate in the online survey was sent to all undergraduate students at five public universities in Saudi Arabia. In total, 453 students from five public universities participated in this study. The results suggested that female students tend to spend more time on SMNs for general purposes and academic purposes than male students. In regard to multitasking with SMNs during schoolwork and social media usage intensity, the results showed no significant differences between male and female students. Finally, the regression analysis showed a positive relationship between students’ academic performance and SMNs usage intensity after gender and high school GPA were controlled for.

Highlights

People are eager to try new technologies, and social media networks (SMNs) are among the popular internetbased technologies that attract many people (Manca & Ranieri, 2016)
A detailed study that pays attention to student characteristics known to influence the use of SMNs in Saudi Arabia is missing, and this study aims to bridge this gap in the extant literature
The main research questions were as follows: (1) Is there a gender difference in the time spent on SMNs for general purposes? (2) Is there a gender difference in the time spent on SMNs for academic purposes? (3) Is there a gender difference in multitasking and SMNs usage intensity? (4) Is there a relationship between SMNs usage intensity and academic performance? SMNs seem to have permeated the everyday lives of undergraduate students in Saudi Arabia

Summary

Introduction

People are eager to try new technologies, and social media networks (SMNs) are among the popular internetbased technologies that attract many people (Manca & Ranieri, 2016). SMNs have attracted hundreds of millions of people, who make them a part of their daily lives and use them to connect with others based on their interests (Clarkson, 2012). People have expanded the uses of SMNs to areas such as business (Li et al, 2014), tourism (Gao et al, 2012), and education (Sánchez et al, 2014). SMNs are platforms that people join to be part of the networks, investigate their contents, build social and educational relationships, and share their experiences (Jiao et al, 2015)

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