Social Media Usage, Psychosocial Wellbeing and Academic Performance

Abstract

Psychosocial wellbeing questionnaires were administered to Dire Dawa Polytechnic college students ( n, 204) to examine the interrelationship of social media usage, psychosocial wellbeing, and academic performance. The result revealed that male students use social media for the reason of making new relationships and female participants used social media to maintain the relationship, those students who spend more time on Facebook followed by telegram and Whatsapp. Results of the Pearson correlation indicated that the academic performance of students negatively correlated and significantly with social media usage (telegram, Facebook, and Whatsapp), while they are positively correlated with self-esteem. Besides, depression correlated positively with telegram, Facebook, and Whatsapp usage. Facebook usage was significantly and negatively correlated with students' self-esteem and social anxiety. Moreover, female students were low self-esteem and more depressed than male students regarding social media usage. Students who had a low level of social media usage are better in their psychosocial wellbeing than those students who had a high and moderate level of media usage.