Deciphering the social costs of Social Networking Sites (SNSs) for university students

This study describes the impact of social networking sites (SNSs) on the studying habits of students; as such, multistage sampling technique was used for data collection. In the first stage, six universities (four public and two private universities) were selected as samples on simple random sampling basis, from which 1000 students were selected as the sample of the study using cluster sampling technique. Four main clusters/faculties, that is, Management Sciences/Business, Social Sciences, Natural Sciences and Engineering, from each university were selected for data collection. It was decided that the minimum number of faculties present for data collection should be two to make a university eligible for selection as a sample. A questionnaire was used as a tool for data collection. Out of the samples, 73% responded back. The fact explored is that despite the use of social networking sites, students can balance their time between studies and their usage of these sites, and can sustain good studying habits to maintain their academic performance. Hence, usage of these networking tools does not adversely affect the studying habits of the student users.