Impact of social media on the academic performance of undergraduate medical students

Background: Social media has become an integral part in the life of every individual in the 21st century. Social media addiction in the younger age group is a major problem. The objective of this study was to find a correlation between academic performance and social media use. Methods: This was a cross-sectional questionnaire-based study conducted in a medical school over a period of 3 months (Nov 2018–Jan 2019), where 400 medical undergraduates who use social media participated in the study. Data collected from the questionnaire included the academic performance in terms of university examination marks, the duration of social media use per day and the social media addiction score. Data correlation was done using the Pearson's correlation factor. Results: 41.5% of students used social media for upto 3 h per day. Whatsapp (98.25%) and Youtube (91.75%) were the most commonly used social media applications. 73.5% used social media to read health-related news, 71.5% used it to complete assignments and more than 50% used it for seminar preparation, test preparation and research-related purposes. Academic performance of female students was better than male students. There was a significantly higher use of social media among academically low-performing medical students compared with high-performing medical students. There was a weak negative correlation between academic performance and social media usage and a strong positive correlation between social media usage and the social media addiction score. Conclusions: Social media has a negative impact on the academic performance of 21st-century undergraduate medical students.