Correlating Social Media Habits with Academic Achievement
A Quantitative Study of Undergraduates in Assam
Keywords:
Social media usage, Academic achievement, Digital distraction, Undergraduate studentsAbstract
The digital connectivity has radically rearranged the topography of undergraduate education in India, but its overall impact on student achievement remains a source of controversy in the academic community. The current study focuses on the interconnection between social media usage and academic performance in 402 undergraduate students enrolled in colleges under Assam University, Silchar, especially in the North-Eastern context of India, a field where limited scholarship exists. The study operationalized three main variables using a structured cross-sectional survey, including daily social media engagement (V7), a ten-question perceived-distraction composite (V22.1–V22.10), and a fourteen-question academic functioning index (Q8.1–Q8.14). The inquiry was conducted based on four research objectives, namely, to profile the social media behaviors of students, to measure perceived academic distraction, to establish the direct correlational relationship between social media use and academic achievement, and finally, to model the joint predictive value of intensity of use and distraction on academic functioning. The analysis consisted of Pearson correlation and ordinary least squares multiple regression. In contradiction to the existing premise of undeniable negative effects of increased social media use, a positive, but statistically insignificant, correlation was found between daily social media time and academic functioning (r = + 0.13, p = .05), whilst perceived distraction was not associated with academic outcomes (r = -0.02). In the regression model, social media time was found to have a weak but significant positive relationship to academic functioning (b = 0.0094, p=.008), but distraction did not add any value either (b= -0.0012, p=.93). The model explained 1.8 percent of academic functioning (R² = 0.018, F(2, 399) = 3.66, p = .027). These results criticize binary discourses that reduce social media use to academic damage and highlight the importance of context-sensitive and purpose-distinct digital literacy training models, especially in library and information science strategies. The implications on the practical sense of academic librarians, curriculum designers, and higher-education policymakers in North-East India are depicted.
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