Social Networking and Academic Performance: A Generalized Structured Component Approach

Abstract

The proliferation of social networking sites (SNS) use by students has been accompanied by both concerns and excitement regarding the consequences of SNS use. Research on SNS use has become increasingly popular in the educational literature. There are a variety of ways that SNS use can affect students, and indeed the work in this stream of research has documented the links between SNS use and various outcome variables. One research question raised given the popularity of SNS with students—which has been both limited and inconsistent in published results—concerns the link between SNS use and academic performance. As SNS use increases, such questions aimed at disentangling the link have become increasingly important to address. However, related investigations have yielded conflicting results and are deficient in documenting the interplay and influences of other variables. The present study aims to clarify the association between SNS and academic performance by testing an exploratory model to examine the connections between SNS use, student-school traits, and academic performance. We suggest that educational researchers should distinguish between adaptive and maladaptive SNS use in academic settings.