Centennial Honors College
Western Illinois University
Undergraduate Research Day 2014
Poster Presentation
The Benefits of Social Media Usage for Undergraduates
Kristen Stiger
Faculty Mentor: Eugene Mathes
Psychology
Recent research has found evidence to suggest that college students who use social
media websites gain some benefits from that usage that other college students do not.
A social media usage among college students item was correlated with 73 other items.
A sample of four male and 26 female college students from the spring 2013 Advanced
Personality course filled out the items. Each semester for Advanced Personality
students do a research project based on two items which they write and which are
responded to by all the members of the class. For spring 2013 there were 74 items total
plus five items measuring the Big 5. One item, "I spend more time on social media
websites (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) than the average college student," measured social
media use. This study involved correlating this item with all of the other items in the
survey. The results indicated that a total of ten significant or near significant (p < .10)
correlations were found. This study focused on five of those correlations. Social media
use correlated with participation in extracurricular activities; being happy, sociable, and
agreeable; and going out. Results supported the hypothesis that social media usage
does indeed provide some social benefit to undergraduate students.