The Effects Of Social Media On International Students' Academic Performance In Tianjin,China

Social media has become a growing global flow and spread in almost every corner of the world.This illustrates that social media is a dynamic way to spread information,exchange information and create collaborative interactions between individuals with computers without regard to geographical space limitations(Ugwulebo and Okoro,2016).This study aims to analyze the impact of social media on academic outcomes experienced by international students in Tianjin and also to focus on highlighting the relationship between the use of social media and academic results.The independent variable(X)in this study is the use of social media while the dependent variable(Y)is the student's academic results.The survey in this study used a questionnaire containing 30 questions with the object of using a Likert scale.The quantitative approach used in this study has been adapted to gather the necessary study data.Participants in this study were within the scope of universities in Tianjin,and the number of them was 34 international students who were selected using easy sampling techniques.In this thesis,there are four research questions and contain two hypotheses.The findings in this study explain the perceptions of international students about the effects of using social media on their academic results as well as to explore the effects of academic majors,academic status,and gender on users.They,of course,have differences in perception and usage on social media.The impact of using positive social media among students seems to be higher than the negative impact.There were no statistically significant differences between the positive and negative impacts of using social media and student academic outcomes(GPA).The researcher suggests that educators in universities and students use social media only as a supporting tool for connectivity and to increase knowledge in the learning process.The conscious steps that can be taken to take advantage of the use of social media are only for academic purposes and to limit their use to socializing less.Students should be advised by educators to limit the amount of time they spend each day on their social media sites and provide advice to them to use their free time to read books to increase their knowledge rather than spend it on playing social media.The results of this study indicate that the relationship between time spent on social media sites and academic results has a significant relationship.It was also found that there was no substantial effect on student academic results with the use of social media that students participated in.Besides,in this research analysis,it was also found that the gender of students did not affect the use and activity in social media.It can be underlined that students with lower academic grades do not always become addicted to the Internet,but they use the Internet for help and entertainment only.They also use the Internet to increase their knowledge and skills to support better academic progress.