The impact of social networking sites on students’ social wellbeing and academic performance

Abstract

Social networking sites have played an important role in enhancing students’ social presence. As an educational tool for online courses, they have significantly contributed in promoting students’ motivation for learning. The aim of this research is to investigate the impact of social networking sites on students’ academic performance. We conduct a comprehensive review on the usage of social networking sites in academic environments to identify the influential factors and propose a new model based on several research hypotheses. To evaluate the hypotheses and verify the proposed model, a survey is conducted on the female students from a major research university in Malaysia. We use Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory to perform the data analysis. In relation to the statistical technique, this technique can find the casual relationships among the factors, their effect size and their importance levels. The results of our survey revealed that there is positive relationship between social presence, students’ social wellbeing and their academic performance.