Abstract

The twenty first century has witnessed a swift development in the production and usage of the Social Media Technology. Universities and other tertiary institutions have eagerly welcomed this development. However, a number of educationalists and material developers have foreseen the dangers of undue reliance and misuse of technology by these university students. This research wants to find out how productive do Solusi University students use the Social Media Technology. Questionnaires were distributed and collected from a randomly selected Solusi University student body (N=108) by the researchers. Data obtained from questionnaires was computed using the SPSS package. Results indicated that students were knowledgeable about the social media and they mainly used computers and mobile phones for their social media needs. Students mainly used the following social media types: social networks, for example, Facebook and MySpace; Social Search, for example, Google and Wikis for example Wikipedia. Findings also showed that students mainly used the social media for academic purposes and social communication, that is, what the social media is intended for. The step wise regression analysis showed a coefficient of .784 which is an indicator of a strong relationship between what the social media is ethically intended for and what it was used for by Solusi University students. An F value of 6.818 indicated that the regression was true and not by chance.

Key words: Social media technology; social networking; tertiary institutions.