ArticleFrontiers in psychology2026
Social media use motives and academic performances: exploring the mediating role of daily usage duration.
Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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Abstract
Introduction: Research on social networking site (SNS) use and academic performance shows inconsistent results, partly because most studies treat SNS use as a uniform exposure and rarely test motive-specific mechanisms or conditional pathways. Motive-based and mechanism-oriented models remain limited, particularly in medical education and Saudi higher-education contexts. Aim and objectives: Guided by Uses and Gratifications theory, this study examined a motive-differentiated and mechanism-based model in which SNS use motives relate to academic performance through daily time spent, and examined whether these indirect pathways vary across motivational and student characteristics, and also integrated motive-specific mediation and moderated mediation analyses within a single framework. Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out between November, 2025 to February, 2026 involving 323 undergraduate medical students in Eastern Saudi Arabia. SNS motives were assessed using a validated multi-dimensional scale, while daily SNS time and GPA were measured using structured self-report items. Mediation and exploratory moderated mediation analyses were performed using PROCESS with covariate adjustment and 5,000 bootstrap samples. Results: SNS motives showed selective associations with time spent and GPA. Daily SNS time was negatively associated with GPA across models. Time spent significantly mediated the relationship between socialization motives and GPA, whereas indirect effects for other motives were not robust after adjustment. Informational motives retained a negative direct association with GPA, while academic motives showed a small positive total association. Conditional process analyses further showed that motive → time → GPA pathways varied by co-occurring motives and student characteristics. Conclusion: By integrating motive differentiation, behavioral mediation, and conditional process modeling in a Saudi medical education setting, this study advances SNS-academic performance research beyond exposure-based approaches and provides novel evidence that academic associations are motive-specific, time-mediated, and context-dependent.
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