What Social Media Network is Often Used by College Students?

Most college students use Facebook and YouTube. Others have a strong interest in Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok.

Twitter has a character limit of 280 characters. This micro-tweeting platform is widely used in education, particularly for posting explanations.

This study is one of the few to examine the U&G for four leading SNS platforms. Findings show that the intensity to use each platform differs in terms of entertainment, time spent daily and motivation.

Facebook

Facebook is a popular social media website that allows people to share their life experiences with others. It was founded in February 2004 by Harvard University students Chris Hughes, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Eduardo Saverin. It was created to help college students find community and stay connected with their friends. Facebook has recently launched a new feature called “Campus” to address this need.

The study of 98.2 % health science students at a medical college in Nepal revealed that most of them use facebook for socialization and to remain in contact with family and friends. However, it is also used as a source of daily news updates and entertainment. The research results showed that using facebook for educational purposes was influenced by the constructs of GPA, autonomy need and procrastination.

Therefore, future studies should take these variables into account when examining the impact of Facebook on academic achievement like this. This could include focusing on other SDT-related outcomes for academic success such as motivational characteristics and well-being.

Instagram

Instagram is a photo and video-sharing platform that focuses on visual appeal. It’s like a simplified version of Facebook and is used on mobile devices. Users can interact with each other by following others, letting others follow them, commenting, liking, tagging, and private messaging. Instagram also offers a variety of filter options and a range of editing tools to help make photos or videos look more appealing. Additionally, it allows users to create IG Reels or IGTV videos that can be up to 60 seconds long.

This social media platform is popular among young adults and is one of the more widely used apps. It is often used for style inspiration, discovering new trends or brands, and learning about what influencers are doing. Among this group, majorities report using Instagram and Snapchat, and about half use TikTok. In our study, the intensity to use Instagram was significantly predicted by entertainment, self-documentation, and the number of people followed.

YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing website that was created in 2005 by three former PayPal employees. It is owned by Google, and it allows users to create a user profile and post videos that they have created or found. It is also a platform where users can comment on other videos.

Many students use YouTube to watch movies and television shows. They also use it to learn how to do something (tutorials), or to keep up with their favorite artists’ new music videos.

YouTube is also used by students to find jobs. Six in 10 students say that social media is useful to learn about a company, and 40% believe it can help them connect with employers. Black, Asian, and Hispanic students are more likely than white students to find social media helpful in finding employment. They are also more likely to report using social media to share information about their job search with friends and family members.

Twitter

Twitter is a microblogging service that allows its users to send and receive short text messages, called tweets. It has a massive global user base and can be a great tool for finding out about current events, news, or other topics of interest.

Incorporating Twitter into your class can also help students develop a new set of digital skills and become more comfortable using social media tools outside the classroom. In addition to promoting digital literacy, it can also give your students the opportunity to interact with authors and other people from around the world. In one course I teach, my students have tweeted to authors of some of the core dystopian readings and gotten responses from Cory Doctorow and Paolo Bacigalupi.

This study explored the U&G of four different popular social media platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter using a sample of college students. Several demographic variables were found to predict intensity of use; gender maintained its prediction for Facebook and Instagram, but ceased to be significant for Twitter.