Educational Motives and Perceived Educational Consequences as Predictors of Facebook Usage

This study proposes a model and validates it with the help of uses and gratifications theory, displacement theory and the individual differences theory. The tenets of the proposed model are: the associations of the educational motives with Facebook use; the association of perceived consequences resulting from Facebook use with the Facebook use; the interactional effect of the weekly time patterns and gender for Facebook use; the interactional effect of the daily and weekly time patterns for the educational motives for Facebook use; and the interactional effect of the daily and weekly time patterns for the perceived consequences resulting from Facebook use among university students in Lahore. By using convenience sampling technique, students are selected from the population of educational institutions in Lahore. The variance explained in the dependent variable of motives for Facebook usage and the perceived consequences is 22.9%. Both variables of educational motives (β = .402) and the perceived consequences (β = .200) have made significant contribution to the prediction of Facebook usage but the former has made the unique one. Male students are using Facebook more than the female students (η2 = .01). The interaction effect of daily and weekly time patterns have small effects on educational motives (η2 = .038) and the perceived consequences (η2 = .032). Facebook is found empowering the students for the educational motives, however university students perceive that Facebook use has consequences when they use it for more than two hours in different parts of the day. Keyword: Facebook usage, educational motives, perceived academic consequences, time, university students, Lahore 1 Professor & Chairperson, Department of Mass Communication, Lahore College for Women University, Lahore, Pakistan 2 PhD Scholar Communication Studies, Institute of Communication Studies, University of the Punjab Lahore 3 Assistant Professor, Department of Mass Communication, Lahore College for Women University, Lahore, Pakistan Zia et.al Educational Motives & Facebook Usage 2 Introduction Any website that allows social interaction is considered a social media site (e.g., Facebook, Twitter and You Tube) and these sites offer youth a portal for entertainment and communication and have grown rapidly in recent years (O’Keeffe et al., 2011, p.800). The social network sites (e.g. Facebook) are the web-based services that allow individuals to construct a public or semipublic profile within a bounded system, articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system(Boyd & Ellison, 2007, p.211). Facebook is a social networking website and the functional definition of Facebook is based on three factors: communication (what), efficiency (how), and friend/family/coworkers (who) and why people like to communicate efficiently with their friends, family and coworkers (Mauri, Cipresso, Balgera, Villamira, & Riva, 2011, p. 1). Beginning in September 2005, Facebook expanded to include high school students, professionals inside corporate networks, and, eventually, everyone (Boyd & Ellison, 2007, p.218). Students who were involved in online relationships were found to be those who were willing to communicate in real life justifying the rich get richer hypothesis, which states that the internet primarily benefits extraverted individuals (Sheldon, 2008). At the time of writing, several attempts have been made for log-ins in the morning and will continue from dawn to dusk and at night hours with an ongoing cycle. This network site can be accessed anywhere 24/7 with Wi-Fi. In the previous research, Journal of Media Studies 35(2) 3 the smart phone was found to be the most motivational factor for Facebook usage (Hussain & Saleem, 2016). With the help of smart phone, there are increased chances of Facebook usage. It is also found that the use of the social networking sites is a particular popular activity on smart phones since nearly 80% of the time with these social networking sites is spent using mobile technologies (Marketingland, 2016). Students in Serbia had spent a daily average of 2.76 hours on Facebook, while the average total daily smart phone use is 8:34 h; student in this country were found to sacrifice academic work, rather than time for Facebook, smart phone, or leisure activities (Janković, Nikolić, Vukonjanski, & Terek, 2016). The other possibility for the excessive usage for this social networking site is that the “Facebook application” can be downloaded easily from Google store with a single click within few minutes on palm top which is today’s smart phone. This social networking site is user friendly and has many features which invite every age group for liking, sharing, commenting and doing discussion on issues at the national and international levels for communication. This networking social revolution was initially started as an educational platform by Harvard University students (Cassidy, 2006) which still have the potential for the usage for educational purposes in Pakistan. The students in the metropolitan Lahore city of Pakistan are observed to be using this social networking site at home, hostels and the educational institutes. The active social media users in Pakistan have grown by 5.7% from 2018 to 2019; the mobile social media users in Pakistan have grown by 13% or by 4 million; Facebook alone is generating monthly traffic of 46, 000, 000 with time per Zia et.al Educational Motives & Facebook Usage 4 visit of 17 minutes 45 seconds (Farooq, 2019). The comparison of Facebook use among university students reveals some interesting statistics. In the year 2006 when Facebook was newly introduced in Pakistan there were only 60% students who were using Facebook in Lahore city in the published research article (Waqas, Afzal, Zaman, & Sabir, 2016); however in the same year 100% students were found to be Facebook users in the same city in a fresh thesis (Hussain & Saleem, 2016). In the beginning from 2006 towards 2011, Facebook was not that popular, however, in 2012 there were 6 million Pakistanis on Facebook (“Over 6 million Pakistanis on Facebook! ,” 2012) but in the year 2019 these Facebook users are now 31.4 million (“Facebook users in Pakistan,” 2019). The Facebook groups are made by students. Trust and presence of teaching members were indicated to have significant influences in affecting higher education students' perception and engagement in Facebook learning groups (Hong & Gardner, 2018). The factors were investigated that influence professors' and students' intentions to add each other as friends on Facebook in United States and consistent with the theory of reasoned action, intention was found to be the strongest predictor of them adding each other as Facebook friends (Sheldon, 2016). However, in another study, students are found to use Facebook for various Factors like entertainment, relaxing, passing time but not for knowledge enhancement (Mathur, Nathani, Sharma, Modi, & Arora, 2019). In this way, students are not using this social networking site only for the educational purposes or the gratifications but sometimes misuse it. The students in particular Journal of Media Studies 35(2) 5 are found to be utilizing Facebook for interaction with lecturers and perceived it as appealing and would embrace such activities in future; however, lecturers had seemed split in opinion for interaction with students with the help of Facebook (Ellefsen, 2016). The assumption for the current research is that students who have to spend their valuable time for their studies are spending their time uselessly which can lead to academic consequences rather than the active gratification for educational motives. Facebook has navigational and customizable features and has contributed towards the right of freedom of speech and expression in today’s liberal and modern world. But each innovation brings with it the flow of prospects and consequences. In every era of changing communication, the technology is researched in empowered and vulnerable paradigms. But the current study researches the Facebook in both paradigms to research whether students find it useful or useless. Thus, the objectives are to research: psychometric validation of extended model: associations of the educational motives and academic consequences as independent variables with the dependent variable of Facebook usage; the interaction effect of weekly time patterns and gender on overall Facebook usage; the interaction effect of the daily and weekly time patterns on the educational motives and perceived academic consequences among university students in Lahore. In view of conflicting observed facts of positive and negative use of the popular social networking site of Facebook, Zia et.al Educational Motives & Facebook Usage 6 the following literature review is done for the educational motives and academic consequences resulting from Facebook usage among students. In the previous research, Facebook is found to be the social networking site for remaining in contact among students (Foregger, 2008). Female students aged 22 and above were found to be the excessive Facebook users and the students were found to be using Facebook for social interaction, communication, educational and religious gratifications (Shahnaz, 2011). The previous research (Hussain & Saleem, 2016) had conceptualized the activity patterns for Facebook usage as friending, un-friending, making profiles, playing games, group creation, poking, calling, embedding posts, tagging, event checking, downloading, status updating, notifying, sharing, liking, Facebook roaming, uploading, changing cover photo, chatting and commenting. The mean values for chatting, status update, changing cover photo, embedding posts, event checking, receiving notifications on SMS and email, tagging, uploading, downloading, using more than one place for using Facebook