The Research On The Effect Of Social Media Overload On University Students' Academic Performance

Social media provides users with a platform to communicate with each other through sharing,so that people can easily exchange information and establish social relationships with others without the limitation of time and location.With the rapid development of mobile communication technologies,social media has become an indispensable part of university students' daily life.What is noteworthy is that,social media is a double-edged sword,which brings convenience to students,but also leads to a series of negative consequences.In recent years,the dependence on the use of social media of university students has become a topic of widespread concern in the society,and even triggered some debates on the use of social media.Excessive use of social media will exert adverse effects on university students' physiology,psychology and behavior,one of which is the decrease of academic performance.By reviewing and combing the existing literature on the irrational usage of social media,we find that the existing literature has very limited understanding of the negative impact of excessive social media use on student users,and there is a lack of empirical research based on theory in exploring its influencing mechanism.In order to explore how the excessive use of social media affects the academic performance of university students,we draw from the perspective of the interaction between environmental stimulus and individual psychology and behavior,and focuses on the concept of social media overload.Based on stressor-strain-outcome model,we constructed a theoretical model.We assume that three types of social media overload,namely information overload,communication overload and social overload,will lead to two types of psychological strain:technostress and exhaustion,which in turn affect the academic performance of university students.To test our hypothesis,we conducted a questionnaire survey on social media usage among 249 Chinese university students,and used structural equation model to test the model.The results of data analysis show that most of the hypothesis are supported.Specifically,information,communication and social overloads all positively impact technostress.However,only information overload has a significant impact on exhaustion,communication overload and social overload show non-significant connections with emotional exhaustion.Moreover,both technostress and exhaustion negatively affect university students' academic performance.Finally,this study examined the mediating role of technostress and exhaustion in the relationship between three types of social media overload and academic performance.This is of great significance for better understanding the phenomenon of excessive social media use among student users.