Serious social media: On the use of social media for improving students' adjustment to college

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2011.05.009Get rights and content

Abstract

A considerable body of research indicates that social support plays an integral role in determining students' successful adjustment to college. Unlike previous research that has evaluated face-to-face support interventions that occur during students' first semester at college, the current study reports on a student-centered social media site designed to enhance students' perceptions of social support prior to their arrival on campus. Results indicated that site usage increased students' perceptions that they would have a diverse social support network during their first semester at college, even when controlling for other potent predictors. The importance of social support perceptions for college adjustment is detailed and the ramifications of the social media intervention are discussed.

Section snippets

Social media and college adjustment

Over the years, many university programs have been conducted to help establish social support networks once students arrive on campus. Several of these programs have focused on developing peer-led support groups (for a review see Mattanah et al., 2010). The emergence of social media has created opportunities to establish peer-support networks prior to students arriving on campus in ways that may not have been previously possible without the affordances of new media. Indeed, social media

Participants

A sample of first-year students at a large Midwestern University was invited to participate in the study. A total of 265 incoming students completed both a pre-test survey prior to their arrival on campus and a follow-up survey during their first two weeks at college. The participants, of whom 70% were female, self-identified with the following ethnicities: Caucasian (80%), African-American (7%), Asian American (6%), Hispanic (3%), Bi or Multi-racial (3%), and (1%) other.

Procedure

First-year students

Results

To examine the effect website activity had on perceptions of bridging self-efficacy for the Fall semester, a stepwise multiple regression was conducted (see Table 1 for correlation matrix, Table 2 for regression results). To better examine the unique influence of website activity, we first controlled for participants' number of Facebook friends in hall and pre-test bridging social capital by entering them into the first block of the equation. The website activity variable was then entered into

Discussion and conclusions

This study examined the potential for a student-only website to shift student expectations about their campus experience and academic success. The summer before arriving on campus is a period of anxiety for many students, who must contend with numerous informational needs but may have few social sources to help address them. This is especially true for first-generation students. We explored whether facilitating connections for incoming students – enabling them to ask questions of one another

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Vennie Gore, Ken Horvath, Nancy Lange, Jacob McCarthy and all the MSU staff that provided data collection and project support.

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