Do educational affordances and gratifications drive intensive Facebook use among adolescents?

Abstract

Adolescents are active users of Facebook and are spending an increasing amount of their daily time on its use. Several recent studies have advocated the need to integrate Facebook use into our existing educational practices. However, at the same time, scholars and educators are wary of the fact that intensive Facebook use (IFU) may not translate into educational uses, learning outcomes and academic well-being. IFU represents an important service use concept that evaluates any user's emotional attachment, connectivity and integration with Facebook use. To address this gap, the present study investigated the role of different Facebook U&G and educational affordances in predicting the IFU among adolescents. A cross-sectional study with 942 adolescent Facebook users from India was conducted. The study results suggest that content U&G did not, while process, technology and social U&G did, play significant roles in predicting IFU. In comparison to Facebook U&G, different educational affordances, namely perceptions of Facebook use in Mathematics, Science and English education, perceptions of its formal use in classrooms and academic information seeking and sharing, did not significantly predict IFU. The study concludes with various theoretical and practical implications for scholars, educational solution developers, pedagogical experts as well as education policy makers.