Relationship between a student's social media use and academic performance at a University course in Thailand

Abstract

Social media is very popular in today's time and has become a daily part of our lives, despite research showing that social media use is time-consuming and distracting especially for academics of young adults. In this project, we perform a statistical analysis of the impact of social media on the academic performance of students at a Business Statistics (ICMB 201) course at Mahidol University International College in Thailand. During Covid-19, the course had few sections online and others on-campus. We investigate whether the sections being online or on-campus, as well as, other relevant variables mediate the relationship of social media use and academic performance. Using a two-sample hypothesis testing methodology, followed by a test of significance of parameters in a multiple linear regression setting, we analyze the effect of hours of social media use on two test scores of the course. We find evidence that more social media use has an adverse effect on one of the test scores especially for the sections that were conducted online. This can guide a general student on the cons of social media use towards their academic performance.