Abstract
•The quantitative study to explore the most popular amongst Saudi students.•The study establishes relation among the social media usage and academic grades.•Poor time management and football also have negative impact on academic grades.•Normality tests are to find relationship among social media usage and GPA scores.•The hypothesis about existence of relationship among GPA and SN is not satisfied.
Social media is a popular method for communication amongst university students in Saudi Arabia. However excessive social media use can raise questions about whether academic performance is affected. This research explores this question by conducting a survey on university students in Saudi Arabia in regards to social media usage and their academic performance. The survey also explored which social network is the most popular amongst Saudi students, what students thought about their social media usage and factors besides social media usage which negatively affect academic performance.
The survey received 108 responses and descriptive statistics including normality tests i.e. scatter plots were used to examine the relationship between the average number of hours students spent of social media a week and GPA scores of the students. The results demonstrated that there was no linear relationship between social media usage in a week and GPA score. Students highlighted that besides social media use, time management is a factor which affects students ‘studies negatively.
The findings of the paper can be used to propose the effective plans for improving the academic performance of the students in such a way that a balance in the leisure, information exchange and academic performance can be maintained.