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A Study on the Impact of Facebook Usage on

Student’s Social Capital and Academic
Performance.
Vishal Shah
Information Systems, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, United States., [email protected]

Sankara-Subramanian Srinivasan
Univ of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, United States., [email protected]

Sana Rouis
Department of Business Administration, Technology and Social Sciences, Lulea University, Luleå , Sweden., [email protected]

Moez Limayem
College of Business - South Florida, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, United States., [email protected]

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Shah, Vishal; Srinivasan, Sankara-Subramanian; Rouis, Sana; and Limayem, Moez, "A Study on the Impact of Facebook Usage on
Student’s Social Capital and Academic Performance." (2012). AMCIS 2012 Proceedings. 27.
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Shah et al. Facebook Usage, Social capital and Academic Performance

A Study on the Impact of Facebook Usage on

Student’s Social Capital and Academic Performance

Vishal Shah Sankara Subramanian

University of Arkansas University of Arkansas
[email protected] [email protected]

Sana Rouis Moez Limayem

Lulea University, Department of Business University of South Florida
Administration, Technology and Social Sciences [email protected]
[email protected]

ABSTRACT

Prior research has focused on the benefits of usage of social media such as Facebook in terms of the social capital
gains they bring. Other research has studied the adverse impact of such usage on academic performance. In this
study we try to understand both the beneficial and adverse aspects of Facebook usage in the case of U.S.
undergraduate students. Basing on social capital theory and system usage in hedonic context, we tested the dual
effect of the usage of Facebook on social capital and academic performance of the students. Preliminary results
show that a rich use of Facebook enhances the academic performance and extensive presence on Facebook develops
the student’s social capital in terms of number and quality of connections, relationships and interactions.
Implications of the early research findings and directions for future research are drawn.

Keywords

Facebook usage, social capital, academic performance, social media.

INTRODUCTION

Launched in February 2004, Facebook has been a phenomenal success, with about 500 million active users around
the world till date. Over 700 billion minutes are spent on this networking platform per month (Facebook 2011).
Facebook was targeted at college population and has extended its user base to include professional and older people.
As we want to study outcome that are salient to college demographics, Facebook lends itself as an ideal network as
an instance of social media to study certain aspects of online communities and its effect on its users. Further,
students’ behavior of spending excessive time on Facebook is a major concern to both academics and policy makers
as it could adversely affect their academic performance. Research on excessive use of computer and internet has
shown that it could lead to addictive and compulsive internet usage and even depression (van den Eijnden,
Meerkerk, Vermulst and Spijkerman 2008). This could also over long term threaten productivity of organizations as
college students might subsequently continue such behavior in to their job environments. This is because once habit
has set in; usage can happen without the need for conscious intention (Limayem, Hirt and Cheung 2007). Hence,
there is an urgent need to understand better about student’s usage behavior of social media as a first step towards
devising appropriate interventions.

Previous studies on social media usage have focused on identifying user characteristics related to usage of social
media like Facebook (Sheldon 2008; Ellison, Stienfield and Lampe 2007). An important consequence of the
interaction via these social media technologies is the effect on one’s social ties. From the rich literature in Social
Networks (SN), we know that one’s social ties can serve both affective and instrumental goals. Little scholarly

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Shah et al. Facebook Usage, Social capital and Academic Performance

research has addressed whether social media tools are being used to maintain old ties or develop new ties. Research
in general has analyzed either the positive or negative effect of students’ presence on the social networking sites and
overlooked the possibility that these tools can offer both advantages and disadvantages simultaneously. For
example, a study by Subrahmanyam, Kraut, Greenfield and Gross (2000) found that use of computers and playing
online games improved academic performance and cognition skills of students. On the other hand a study on video
games (Anand 2007) found that use of computers decreases academic performance. Studying the advantages alone
would lead to the conclusion that even an excessive usage may not be necessarily bad. Studying the disadvantages
alone would lead to erroneous conclusion that these systems should not be used. Understanding relative advantages
and disadvantages of social media usage simultaneously will help us better understand the effects at play. To some
extent, it will also help understand the reason for the sustained usage behavior among college population. Besides,
this will be the first step in identifying the cognitive mechanisms that lead to sustained usage of social media helping
educational policy makers and administrators to design and implement optimal policies regarding social media use
and design appropriate interventions to regulate. As a first step in this direction, this research considers both the
advantage and disadvantage together to understand the potential dynamics at play.

We use social capital theory (Nahapiet and Goshal 1998) and hedonic system use to establish a mechanism which
explains continued usage of social media. Previous studies have used a coarse and aggregate measure of system use
that may not be amenable to explain phenomenon in a hedonic context. We further refine measure of use by
incorporating/measuring system use in a way that is more suited to hedonic context as the phenomena (Facebook
use) is inherently hedonic. We build on Ellison et al. (2007), by integrating social capital theory while also
employing a refined measure of system usage (Burton-Jones and Straub 2006) and propose and test a research model
to explain relative advantages and disadvantages of social media use.

THEORY AND HYPOTHESES DEVELOPMENT

Social capital

Nahapiet and Goshal (1998) defined social capital as “the sum of the actual and potential resources embedded
within, available through, and derived from the network of relationships possessed by an individual or social unit”.
In a network of people, social capital can be viewed as a set of resources and potential actions that an individual can
take by leveraging those resources as a function of his/her position in the group and relationship he/she has with
other members of network. It is suggested that social capital is not a single entity but variety of different entities;
each consisting of some aspects of social structure and facilitating certain actions (Coleman 1990). Individual under
consideration is termed as “actor” in a social network and consists of his relationship with other actors within a
collectivity (organization, community, nation, and so forth) i.e. “internal ties” and this type of relationships are more
cohesive in nature (Adler and Kwon 2002) and outside the collective environment with other actors termed as
“external ties”. Depending on their cohesiveness, network research has referred to external ties as “weak ties”
(Granovetter 1973) and internal ties as “strong ties”. Weak ties lead to formation of social capital termed as
“bridging social capital” and it gives access to individuals outside of close circle provides access to non-redundant
information often resulting in benefits such as employment connections. Strong ties lead to formation of “bonding
social capital” (Putnam 2000). Further, Ellison et al. (2007) develops idea of “maintained” social capital. They
define it as ability to maintain valuable connections as one advances though various stages of life.

Specifically, we place the above described forms of social capital (bonding, bridging and maintained social capital)
into the framework developed by Nahapiet and Goshal (1998) which is more widely used in information systems.
The framework lays out three dimensions of social capital i.e. structural (network ties and configuration), cognitive
(shared codes and understanding of issues developed due to ties with other group members, shared narratives) and
relational dimensional (trust, norms, obligation, identification). Previously developed conceptualizations of social
capital (bridging, bonding and maintained) span over all three dimensions of social capital as whenever a tie is
formed via social media it changes the structure of underlying network and its formation is based on cognitive
aspect (shared understanding/narrative) and relational aspects (such as trust). Although Social capital has been
linked to positive (Adler and Kwon 2002) and negative outcomes (Nie 2001), in general it is associated with positive
outcomes (Helliwell and Putnam 2004). There is overwhelming evidence which suggests that internet and social
media use increases social capital. For example, usage of social media was found to shape political attitudes,
efficacy, and behavior and enhance communication (Kavanaugh, Caroll, Rosson, Zin and Reese 2005; Hampton and

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Shah et al. Facebook Usage, Social capital and Academic Performance

Wellman 2003). We think one of the reasons for the mixed results is that previous studies (e.g. Nie 2001) used a
coarse measure “system use” while other studies focused on collaborative aspects via usage of blogs and online
forums. Our study focuses on the latter and adopts the refined measure of system use proposed by Burton-Jones and
Straub (2006). Figure 1 shows our proposed model.

Figure 1. Research model

Academic performance

Research on video game usage indicates that it may have a detrimental effect on academic performance (Anand
2007). Also, other research shows that computer use can improve academic performance (Subrahmanyam et al.
2000). Hunley, Evans, Delgado-Hachey, Krise, Rich and Schell (2005) found no relation between academic
performance of student and computer usage. Studies so far examined effects of online communication on
adolescents covering a vast range of behaviors such as (a) seeking information; (b) surfing; (c) searching for
pornography; (d) downloading music; films, software, and so forth; (e) e-mailing; (f) instant messaging; and (h)
video games (Selfhout, Branje, Delsing, Bogt and Meeus 2009).

Behaviors that are described above have many similarities with those observed while using social media. However,
it is very important to capture hedonic component of system use due to nature of phenomenon being studied. This
component of use is largely missing in previous studies. “Video games” cannot be considered as representative of
social media per se. Although, certain type of video games like Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMORG)
has characteristics similar to social media but in these studies it wasn’t clear which type of video games (MMORG,
stand-alone etc.,) are being studied. Even in investigation of video games there are mixed results, it was found to
have positive impact on academic performance (Durkin and Barber 2002). Social media (like Facebook) use can
have significant impact on academic performance and needs an investigation using refined measure of use. We
capture behaviors related to Facebook usage that includes browsing profiles, seeking information, posting links,
playing games provided by Facebook apps, chatting on Facebook IM.

As argued before for our context of hedonic IS we need a more granular measure of system use (Burton Jones and
Straub 2006). It has two sub components as follows.

Rich use - cognitive absorption

Agarwal and Karahana (2000) define cognitive absorption (CA) as “a state of deep involvement with software”. It is
theorized to be exhibited through the dimensions of temporal dissociation, focused immersion, heightened
enjoyment, control, and curiosity. CA is more pronounced in intrinsically motivated usage of a system like social
media. Following from Agarwal and Karahana (2000), CA has been proposed as a second order reflective construct
with components as Temporal Dissociation (TD), Focused Immersion (FI), Heightened Enjoyment (HE), Control
(CO), and Curiosity (CU). In the IS context, when someone experiences temporal disassociation, the individual loses
sense of time while using the IT system and focused immersion consumes all the resources of an individual to attend
the task at hand. Generally mental workload is defined as difference between cognitive resource allocated and those

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Shah et al. Facebook Usage, Social capital and Academic Performance

needed to carry out the task (Gopher and Donchin 1986). Thus, mental load associated with the task is reduced.
Sense of excitement, enjoyment, curiosity (Webster, Trevino and Ryan 1993) and control further diminishes the
perceived difficulty of task and heighted enjoyment encourages the user to return to that activity often and in general
will cause him/her to extend the duration of activity while downplaying the temporal dimension associated with it.
State of CA is more pronounced in hedonic information systems. Thus, using Technology Acceptance Model
(TAM) to explain social media usage (Facebook) wouldn’t be appropriate because we are studying usage of an
inherently hedonic system and this is an important boundary condition on TAM (van der Heijden 2004). In this
context CA is considered as “rich use” of the system because different states of CA seem to be happening at the time
of system usage rather than preceding or following it. Thus, an individual or student experiences cognitively
absorbed or flow like state while using Facebook. When an individual is experiencing different states of cognitive
absorption while using Facebook, he/she will lose track of the temporal dimension. As a result the student user will
have less amount of time to devote to study and so we except high level of CA with this system (i. e. Facebook) will
lead to decrease in academic performance.

H1: Cognitive Absorption will have negative influence on academic performance of students

Apparently, the cognitively less absorbing task (for example, adding a contact to one’s network) helps build new
connections (i.e. bridging capital) and a more cognitively absorbing task (for example, chatting may serve to
strengthen already established relation, i.e. bonding or maintained capital). Also it is possible that a student may add
other people in their network while in cognitively absorbed state. Thus, in general higher level of cognitive
absorption with the system will lead to increase in social capital of students.

H2: Cognitive Absorption will have positive influence on social capital of students

Other component of rich use namely “deep structure” use is not included in our study because it has more of
utilitarian nature (Burton-Jones and Straub 2006) and not hedonic. It mostly characterizes comparing and contrasting
data, drawing insightful conclusion and perform calculations all of which are characteristics of utilitarian system.

Lean use- frequency and feature use

Usage of Facebook is usually at the individual task level – such as messaging a friend, adding a new contact
(friend), tagging a photo etc. However, cognitive absorption has been conceptualized to measure usage at the system
level, Hence, we do not have a way of knowing how much one is cognitively absorbed in doing a specific task while
using Facebook as CA is a “system level” use construct. It is not feasible to measure the level of CA for various
tasks/features of system but it is quite possible to measure and count usage of various features of system and
frequency with which user generally uses a system. For this reason we see it appropriate to include another measure
of frequency and feature use termed by Burton-Jones and Straub (2006) as “lean use”.
Though, it should be noted that if students keep on using features of system for longer period of time, it is very
likely to fall in the category of rich use and would be captured by CA. Yet, if a student doesn’t use the features for
long time and in cognitively involved state then, there should be a way to measure frequency and feature use of
Facebook and we use “lean use for that purpose.

As discussed there can be many ways of using system without being cognitively involved in it (i.e. adding a friend,
posting a video etc.). These behaviors seemingly would increase number of contacts one has and would have
positive effect on one of the aspect (bonding, bridging or maintaining) of social capital.

Here, it is assumed that most students use various features on the social media platform to interact with other
students and peers. As long as they are not cognitively involved in task they could devote time to study as well as
benefit from any connections formed in an academically helpful manner. Thus,

H3: Lean use will have positive influence on academic performance of students

H4: Lean use will have positive influence on social capital of students

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Shah et al. Facebook Usage, Social capital and Academic Performance

METHODS

An online questionnaire was employed to measure the constructs of interest. The survey was administered to 120
undergraduate students from a mid-western U.S. university. Of the 120 students 94 completed the survey and
provided usable responses. Of those who completed the study, 68.8% (n=60) were men and 36.8% (n=34) were
women. The average age of participants involved in the study was 21.45. Students varied in year of schooling as
well as in their major and were given extra credit for their participation. General demographics such as age, gender,
ethnicity, education, and GPA were gathered. Items for each construct, and their reliabilities and sources are
reported in Appendix B. We controlled for age, gender and general attitude towards school courses in our analysis.
We analyzed the data using structural equation modeling utilizing the partial least squares (PLS) method (Chin
2010). The software used for this analysis was SmartPLS version 2.0.M3 (Ringle, Wende and Will 2005). To
evaluate and validate the measurement and structural models we examined the convergent and discriminant validity
and item reliabilities as per Chin (2010). We used SPSS to perform factor analysis of CA construct.

Factor analysis of Cognitive absorption showed that all sub factors of Cognitive Absorption (CA) (Temporal
Dissociation (TD), Focused Immersion (FI), Heightened Enjoyment (HE), Control (CO), and Curiosity (CU) loaded
on one common factor indicating that there is only one underlying factor (see Table 1). Thus, we combined all items
of sub factors of CA into a first order reflective construct.

Componenta
1 2 3 4 5
TD1 0.76 -0.29 -0.44 0.08 0.13
TD2 0.66 -0.01 -0.46 -0.25 0.42
TD3 0.80 -0.14 -0.42 0.04 0.04
TD4 0.75 0.01 -0.45 -0.03 -0.18
TD5 0.71 0.10 -0.46 -0.34 -0.18
FI1 0.49 0.50 0.02 0.23 -0.26
FI2 0.23 0.17 0.06 -0.01 0.83
FI3 0.60 0.55 -0.01 0.12 -0.10
FI4-rev -0.09 0.15 0.04 0.81 0.01
FI5 0.41 0.59 0.04 0.37 0.16
HE1 0.76 -0.28 0.11 0.01 0.21
HE2 0.78 0.08 0.27 0.02 0.18
HE3 0.75 -0.31 0.10 0.04 0.13
HE4-rev 0.44 -0.67 0.04 0.23 0.30
CO1 0.49 0.02 0.38 0.04 0.07
CO2-rev 0.55 -0.53 0.21 0.29 -0.25
CO3 0.37 -0.23 0.33 0.21 -0.17
CU1 0.55 0.09 0.35 -0.26 -0.12
CU2 0.74 0.17 0.38 -0.31 -0.96
CU3 0.68 0.29 0.43 -0.21 -0.13
Extraction method: Principal Component Analysis.
a. 5 components extracted
Table 1: Principal Component Analysis of Cognitive Absorption, this table shows all
Items belonging to CA construct some of them like FI4-rev were dropped due to very small loading

Measurement model

Convergent validity, discriminant validity, and reliabilities were assessed. It is commonly accepted that for item
loadings and reliabilities to be acceptable, they must be greater than 0.70 (Nunnally and Bernstein 1994). If the
square root of the AVE is larger than the off-diagonal correlations in the model matrix then it serves as measure of
adequate discriminant validity (Fornell and Larcker 1981). As seen in Table 2, all of the square roots of AVE are
greater than their corresponding correlations to other latent variables indicating discriminant validity except for
Academic Performance where AVE equals the largest correlation with CA. From Table 3, all constructs have
acceptable internal consistency since all reliability scores are above .70 and composite reliability ranges from .76 for

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Shah et al. Facebook Usage, Social capital and Academic Performance

academic performance to 0.94 for social capital. Table 5 in Appendix A shows that reflective items loaded on
respective constructs. It was included in appendix due to space constraints

Academic Perf CA Social Capital USE

Academic Perf 0.54 0.00 0.00 0.00
CA 0.54 0.61 0.00 0.00
Social Capital 0.25 0.21 0.69 0.00
USE 0.23 0.23 0.29 1.00
Note: Since use is a formative measure there is no associated reliability score
Table 2. Correlations and AVE

AVE Composite Reliability R-square Cronbach's Alpha

Academic Perf 0.29 0.76 0.25 0.72
CA 0.37 0.91 0.000 0.90
Social Capital 0.47 0.94 0.10 0.94
USE 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000
Table 3. Reliabilities

Structural model

All PLS models were calculated utilizing 94 cases with 1000 bootstrapping re-samples to estimate the model. The
structural equation model is presented in Figure 2 utilizing standardized path coefficients. The model was able to
explain 25.1% of the variance in academic performance and 10.3% of the variance in social capital formation. H4 is
supported, H2 is not supported but significant in reverse direction than hypothesized, H1 and H3 are not supported
at 0.05 significance level. Please see Figure 2 and Table 4.).

Social media use H2 0.106 +

_
Rich use – Social Capital
Cognitive
H1
0.279*
+ R2 = .103
Absorption _

H4 _
Lean Use – _ Academic
Frequency and 0.463 Performance
H3
feature use _
R2 = .251
+
0.101

Figure 2. Results from PLS

Hypothesis Path Coefficient T-value Conclusion

H1 CA--> AP 0.463 4.379 Not supported ( significant in opposite direction)
H2 CA--> SC 0.101 0.438 Not supported
H3 LU--> AP 0.279 2.335 Supported
H4 LU--> SC 0.106 0.849 Not supported
CA-Cognitive Absorption LU- Lean use SC-Social Capital AP- Academic Performance
Table 4. PLS results

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Shah et al. Facebook Usage, Social capital and Academic Performance

DISCUSSION

This researches advances theory, by enhancing our understanding of the effects of social media usage. Whereas,
prior research focused on only the positive or negative effects, this study considered the possibility that social media
usage could simultaneously lead to both positive and negative outcomes. This helps us to better understand and
explain why students use or don’t use social media such as Facebook, much better than what we would employing
just one perspective alone. As predicted lean use of social media which suggests that social media was used to build
and maintain contacts, led to increase in social capital. CA doesn’t have significant impact on social capital
indicating that CA is truly hedonic part of the use where students are only concerned about intrinsic pleasure and
formation and maintenance of ties are not a concern. Also, lean use has no significant impact on academic
performance. It can be surmised that increase in social capital of student via lean use may lead to better academic
performance i.e. a student uses ties formed via Facebook for academic purposes. Thus, social capital could act as a
mediator. However, we did not test this.

Although the hypothesized effect of cognitive absorption on academic performance (H2) was not supported, it is
worth noting that to our surprise we found that being cognitively involved social media use positively affects
academic performance. As we reviewed extant literature, we found research that suggests that “internet breaks” can
increase productivity of an individual. Belanger and Van Slyke (2002), says that “(internet) facilitates the transfer of
learning from the play domain to work-related tasks” (p. 65). Further, heavy internet users may be more satisfied
and productive workers (Stanton 2002). University of Melbourne researchers (Coker 2011) report that workers are
more productive when workers are allowed to use internet for leisure. Similar argument can be applied to social
media which inherently involves use of internet.

Theoretically, this study examines effect of social media on two aspects (social capital and academic performance).
Study finds that instead of degrading academic performance certain aspect of social media use (rich use – cognitive
absorption) aids in increasing it. Other aspect of social media use (lean use) aids in building social capital. From a
student’s perspective social media seems to help him/her in aforementioned ways and hence its heavy usage
continues and is justified in student’s eyes. Further, it teases out components of “use” responsible for differential
effects and provides a basic nomological network to build on.

LIMITATIONS

Our study is based on self-report data and hence there could have been a bias involved while reporting usage. Also
as CA grows the ability to recall a specific action of using the system may be hampered, as individuals are supposed
to be in a state of flow where they even lose track of time. This may lead to underestimation of actual usage. As it
was a cross sectional study it may so happen that a student with high social capital and academic achievement may
be able to use social media (Facebook) more. Thus order of causality could be reversed.

FUTURE RESEARCH

As a first step, researchers can carry out a longitudinal form of this study and establish direction of causality. This
was a perceptual study, it may well happen that student are not actually experiencing improvement in academic
performance as was found earlier. In fact, their objective grades may even indicate decline while students
themselves seem to perceive social media effect in positive light. Other variables such as goal orientation, life
satisfaction and personality may play significant role in usage of social media. Future research can examine them
and build on current model.

CONCLUSION

Our research has decomposed and examined components of “use” along with various important outcomes (social
capital and academic performance) related to social media use. As usage of hedonic social media systems increase
exponentially, this explanation adds to our understanding of its causes. This study also raises concerns about policies
that restrict or ban use of social media in various settings as classroom etc. as it was found that using social media
was in fact perceived useful by students. On the contrary administrators may even encourage students to use social
media in certain manner that is not in line with the student’s motivation to use such systems. Thus, more research is

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Shah et al. Facebook Usage, Social capital and Academic Performance

required to clearly enhance our understanding of how and why such systems are used. This study has taken the first
step in that direction.

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Shah et al. Facebook Usage, Social capital and Academic Performance

APPENDIX A

Items Academic Performance CA Social Capital USE

ACD2 0.49 0.17 0.10 0.05
ACD3 0.46 0.12 0.12 -0.07
SK1 0.76 0.46 0.35 0.24
SK2 0.77 0.33 0.09 0.28
SK3 0.80 0.38 0.03 0.20
SK4 0.80 0.42 0.18 0.17
SK5 0.77 0.45 0.17 0.24
Sk6 -0.69 -0.36 -0.12 -0.23
BON10 0.19 0.06 0.76 0.29
BON11 0.18 -0.03 0.61 0.32
BON12 0.20 0.08 0.75 0.19
BON13 0.19 0.14 0.74 0.13
BRI1 0.31 0.06 0.63 0.21
BRI2 0.19 -0.03 0.65 0.10
BRI3 0.32 0.19 0.64 0.06
BRI4 0.03 -0.11 0.52 0.05
BRI5 0.20 0.18 0.68 0.11
BRI6 0.18 0.16 0.78 0.16
BRI7 0.24 0.10 0.63 0.11
BRI8 0.17 0.27 0.72 0.16
BRI9 0.24 0.21 0.77 0.17
MAI15 0.05 0.10 0.67 0.25
MAI16 0.17 0.17 0.78 0.25
MAI17 0.08 0.21 0.79 0.28
MAI18 0.15 0.23 0.63 0.20
MAI19 0.19 0.17 0.78 0.20
Count 0.21 0.23 0.29 0.96
FREQ 0.12 0.17 0.16 0.53
TS6 0.01 0.25 0.15 0.34
TD1 0.18 0.69 0.14 0.10
TD2 0.23 0.59 0.16 0.12
TD3 0.25 0.73 0.12 0.12
TD4 0.25 0.67 0.06 0.18
TD5 0.21 0.63 0.02 0.11
HE1 0.38 0.78 0.32 0.20
HE2 0.45 0.81 0.25 0.08

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Shah et al. Facebook Usage, Social capital and Academic Performance

Items Academic Performance CA Social Capital USE

HE3 0.37 0.76 0.34 0.13
HE4-reveresed 0.25 0.47 0.19 0.11
FI1 0.35 0.50 0.13 0.19
FI3 0.29 0.59 0.14 0.14
FI5 0.16 0.39 0.05 0.01
CU1 0.48 0.78 0.09 0.27
CU2 0.51 0.72 0.02 0.17
CU3 0.47 0.65 -0.03 0.13
CO1 0.29 0.51 -0.17 0.06
CO2-rev 0.29 0.42 0.14 0.16
CO3 0.44 0.60 0.11 0.23
Table 5: Cross loadings

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Shah et al. Facebook Usage, Social capital and Academic Performance

APPENDIX B

Cognitive Absorption: Reflective construct comprising of Temporal Dissociation (TD), Focused Immersion (FI),
Heightened Enjoyment (HE), Control (CO), and Curiosity (CU) with cronbach alphas of 0.93, 0.88, 0.93, 0.83 and
0.93 respectively ( Agarwal & Karahana. 2000). Items for cognitive absorption (CA) (TD, HE, CO, CU, FI)

Time appears to go by very quickly when I am using the Web,(1)

Sometimes I lose track of time when I am using the social media (2)
Time flies when I am using the social media (3)
Most times when I get on to the social media, I end up spending more time that I had planned (4)
I often spend more time on the social media than I had intended (5)
While using the social media I am able to block out most other distraction (7)
While on the social media, I am immersed in the task I am performing (8)
When on the social media, I get distracted by other attentions very easily (9)
While on the social media, my attention does not get diverted very easily (10)
I have fun interacting with the social media (11)
Using the social media provides me with a lot of enjoyment (12)
I enjoy using the social media (13)
Using the social media bores me (14)
When using the social media I feel in control (15)
I feel that I have no control over my interaction with the social media (16)
The social media allows me to control my computer interaction (17)
Using the social media excites my curiosity (18)
Interacting with the social media makes me curious (19)
Using the social media arouses my imagination (20)
While using the social media, I am absorbed in what I am doing, (21)

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Shah et al. Facebook Usage, Social capital and Academic Performance

Social capital: Using an adapted scale from Ellision et al. 2007. It has three subparts measuring bonding (BON),
bridging (BRI) and maintained (MAI) social capital with internal consistency coefficients 0.87, 0.75 and 0.81
respectively. Items for Social capital measurement (BRI, BON and MAI)

I am interested in what goes on at UA (1)

UA is a good place to be (2)
I would be willing to contribute money to UA after graduation (3)
Interacting with people at UA makes me want to try new things (4)
Interacting with people at UA makes me feel like a part of a larger community (5)
I am willing to spend time to support general UA activities (6)
At UA, I come into contact with new people all the time (7)
Interacting with people at UA reminds me that everyone in the world is connected (8)
There are several people at UA I trust to solve my problems (9)
If I needed an emergency loan of $100, I know someone at UA whom I can turn to (10)
There is someone at UA I can turn to for advice about making very important decisions (11)
The people I interact with at UA would be good job references for me (12)
I do not know people at UA well enough to get them to do anything important (reversed) (13)
I’d be able to find out about events in another town from a high school acquaintance living there (14)
If I needed to, I could ask a high school acquaintance to do a small favor for me (15)
I’d be able to stay with a high school acquaintance if traveling to a different city (16)
I would be able to find information about a job or internship from a high school acquaintance (17)
It would be easy to find people to invite to my high school reunion (18)

Academic performance: Our items were adapted from Chun-Yen (1999). However, cronbach alpha was not
reported in this paper. Items for Academic achievement (ACD and SK)

From the time I began using social media, my academic performance has deteriorated (1)
From the time I began using social media, my academic performance has improved. (2)
My GPA has increased since I started using social media (3)
My GPA has decreased since I started using social media. (4)
I think that social media usage has helped me enhance the following scientific skills in my studies(5)
observation (1), analysis (2), thinking (3), creativity (4), other aspects (5), no help at all (6)
Note: Certain items were dropped and hence they are not present in the cross loadings matrix (Table 5)

Lean use: Social media usage measured captured frequency with which a participant logged onto Facebook (FREQ)
and average time spent on Facebook in past six months (TS6). Further, the feature use of the participants in terms of
engagement in various Facebook activities(COUNT) such as inbox checking, posting on wall, looking at pictures,
etc. was obtained. There were 14 features captured.

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