AN EVALUATION OF SOCIAL MEDIA USE BEHAVIORS AND SOCIAL MEDIA LITERACY OF PRIMARY SCHOOL STUDENTS

Abstract

This research aims to 1) Examine primary school students' social media use behaviors, 2) Assess the social media literacy of the primary school students, and 3) Investigate the impact of social media use on the social media literacy of the primary school students. Using multi-stage sampling, a sample of 480 4^th-6^th grade students in Nakhonsrithmmarat province was selected. The measure social media literacy included a rating scale self-assessment (reliability of .990) and situational judgement test (reliability of .551). The data were analyzed using a propensity score matching technique. Research results were as follows: 1) the analysis of primary school students' social media use behaviors shows that students mostly used mobile phones. Their duration of use was less than 30 minutes a day. The primary social media platform on which students have accounts was Facebook. They used these platforms once or twice daily, with maximum usage between 6:01 p.m. to 12:00 a.m. The predominant purpose of their social media use was for the entertainment. 2) Based on the social media literacy of primary school students assessed by the rating scale, students exhibited a low level of social media literacy. Conversely, when evaluated using an item, they demonstrated a medium level of social media literacy. 3) According to the propensity score matching analysis conducted to assess the impact of social media uses on social media literacy of primary school students, it was found that, based on scores from student’s responses to rating scale self-assessment, social media uses had a significant positive impact on students’ social media literacy at α = .05 (d = 19.28), t = 6.40, p = .00. However, when the impact assessment was conducted using scores from students’ responses to the situational judgement test, social media uses had a nonsignificant impact on students’ social media literacy (d = 0.19), t = .46, p = 0.84.