Effects of Social Media Usage on Academic Performance of Undergraduate Students

Social media has gained widespread and universal usage among higher education students and started to serve as a new communication platform in teaching and learning process. This article presents the results of a survey study conducted to 394 undergraduate students to analyse the relationship between the variables of social media usage and undergraduate student's academic performance. Additionally, to explore the relationship between using social media in communication activities for academic purposes and undergraduate student's academic performance are among the main concerns of this study. The relationships between mentioned variables were studied by correlational method in descriptive manner. Research results reveal once again the high level of social media usage among undergraduate students to perform variety of daily activities. It has been also determined that, social media as an out of class environment that allows communication about academic issues plays a weak but positive role to increase the level of being more active in class and time spent for preparation to the course before class that are all related to higher academic performance.