Abstract

• Social media has become one of the most popular among students around the world, and students' academic performance is vital for assessing a student's standing at university. The objectives of the study are to describe the demographic characteristics and the social media usage of students, and academic performance of students and to analyze the effects of social media usage on students’ academic performance of second year students at the University of Co-operative and Management, Sagaing. A stratified random sampling method was applied to select 226 students from 522 second year students. The analysis of the study was based on descriptive analysis, correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis with primary data. Descriptive analysis was used to describe the demographic characteristics, social media usage, and academic performance of students and correlation analysis was used to determine the strength of the variables. Multiple regression analysis was used to analyze the effects of social media usage on students’ academic performance. Based on the results of the multiple regression analysis, an adjusted R2 of 0.646 indicates that the effects of social media usage could explain 64.6% of the variation in academic performance. Based on the results, the gender of students has a significantly positive effect on academic performance. Moreover, daily average time spent on social media, belongingness to social media, and monthly expenses for social media usage have a significantly negative effect on academic performance. The results show that gender differences exist in social media usage among students. Male students' use of social media has a negative effect on students' academic performance compared to female students. This study has been found that excessive use of social media leads to decrease academic performance and reduce time spent studying.