Effect of social media usage on university students in an emerging country

Social media is considered to be the fastest online communication used for social networking and it has a significant effect in many fields, more so in the context of higher education. Previous studies have treated social media in terms of accessibility, usability and immediacy in a generalised way, while there is a notable lack of studies on social media usage that affects academic work and social activities. This study proposes the existence of informal learning, seeking information, convenience and student engagement in an educational context and tests their influence on social media usage. A pilot test is conducted for the initial version of the study. A few items are revised based on the pilot test data. All items in the questionnaire are measured on a 5-point Likert scale. Hypotheses were tested with structural equation modeling based on 301 usable survey responses from campus students in Malaysia. The results indicated that informal learning, seeking information and student engagement are found to be direct drivers of social media usage. In addition, informal learning is found to be the primary factor impacting university students to use social media. However, seeking convenience is found to be not significant to social media usage. The findings suggest that social media can be effectively used in the academia by encouraging informal learning both in and out of classes throughout the semester. There are several inherent limitations that should be considered when interpreting the findings. Firstly, the unbalanced age ratio might limit the generalisability of the findings. Also, the data were collected from one private university out of 37 private universities based in Malaysia. Besides that, future studies could investigate the moderation effects of other variables such as cultures with diverse samples that lead to new insights on the cultural impact among other age groups and races within Malaysia. Lastly, this study is cross-sectional and it does not take into account the dynamic relationship between students and the utilization of social media.