Social media use motives and academic performance among Saudi medical students: the mediating role of perceived stress.

BACKGROUND: A growing body of research has documented associations between social media use and perceived stress. However, the psychological mechanisms underlying these associations, particularly the role of perceived stress in the relationship between social media use motives and academic performance among medical students, remain largely unexplored. OBJECTIVE: This study examined the relationships between social media use motives and academic performance among Saudi medical students and investigated whether perceived stress (perceived helplessness and lack of self-efficacy) mediates these relationships. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted among Saudi medical students (N = 323). Data were collected using validated self-report measures assessing social media use motives (academic, entertainment, informational, and socialization), perceived stress dimensions, and academic performance (GPA). Parallel mediation analyses were performed using Hayes' PROCESS macro for SPSS (Model 4) with 5,000 Bootstrap samples. Adjusted models controlled for demographic characteristics, social media use intensity, and the remaining social media use motives. RESULTS: Academic motives were positively associated with GPA, whereas entertainment and socialization motives were negatively correlated with GPA. Informational motives showed no significant relationship with academic performance. Academic motives were associated with lower perceived stress, whereas socialization motives were associated with higher perceived stress. Entertainment motives were associated with higher perceived stress only in the unadjusted analyses. Perceived helplessness and lack of self-efficacy were both negatively associated with GPA. Mediation analyses demonstrated significant indirect effects of academic motives through lower levels of perceived stress and of socialization motives through increased perceived stress. In contrast, entertainment motives did not demonstrate significant indirect effects after covariate adjustment, and informational motives showed no significant indirect effects. CONCLUSION: Social media use motives were differentially associated with academic performance among medical students. Perceived stress partially mediated the associations of academic and socialization motives with GPA, whereas entertainment motives primarily exhibited direct associations with academic performance after adjustment for covariates. These findings highlight the importance of considering both motivational and psychological factors when examining the academic consequences of social media use and underscore the need to promote adaptive social media use and stress-management strategies in medical education.