Social Media Addiction and Academic Adjustment: The Mediating or Moderating Effect of Grit Personality

Year 2020, Volume: 7 Issue: 3, 143 - 151, 12.09.2020

Siah Poh Chua Brian Siew Yirong Sai Zhi Yang

Abstract

The high attrition rate among Malaysian tertiary students have drawn the attention of educators and
policy makers, and poor academic adjustment is regarded as one of the factors. Therefore, it is
important to find out factors that are relevant to their poor academic adjustment so that intervention
programs can be designed to improve their adjustment. Social media addiction and the grit
personality have found to be significant factors that affect academic performance. However, it is not
clear how the three variables interact with each other. Accordingly, this study adopts the essentialist
and contextual perspectives to examine the relationships among these three variables, especially
whether grit is a mediator or moderate for the relationship. 210 undergraduates were recruited by
using the purposive sampling method and were asked to fill in a questionnaire. Partial Least Squares
Structural Equation Modelling was used to analyze the data. The results showed that social media
addiction is negatively associated with grit personality and academic adjustment, and grit is
positively associated with academic adjustment. In addition, grit is a statistical mediator rather than
a statistical moderator for the effect of social media addiction on academic lifestyle. The findings
support the contextual perspective on personality that grit personality is a state that can be changed
by certain social context. The findings reveal the importance of providing a positive social context for
tertiary students who are undergoing a transition period, so that their grit personality can be
developed and thus enhance their academic adjustment.

Keywords

academic adjustment, social media addiction, grit, tertiary education, Malaysia

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