The cultural consequences of using social media as recognized by university students

Abstract

The aim of the study was to identify the reasons for using Whatsapp and Snapchat as recognizedby female students and to identify the cultural consequencesof the use of Whatsapp on the behavior of the university students in respect to social and knowledge field, and to identify the cultural consequencesof the use of Snapchat in respect to cultural and educational field and identify the statistically significance differences of the views among the female university students, which are related to the variables of the study: the stage of study and the number of hours of use.

the researcher used the descriptive survey approach rely on a questionnaire that consisted of (58) sentences distributed according to the fields of the study, it was applied to a sample of (503) female students of College of Education at King Saud University.

Preliminary data of the study showed that 33.2% of the sample used social media daily for more than 6 hours. The study found that the most important reasons for using Whatsapp is to communicate with family, friends and entertainment. They use Snapchat for entertainment, to learn about the cultures of other peoples and to follow up the influential people with experience, and of the cultural consequencesof using Whatsapp on the behavior of the female students in the social field are spreading rumors and mislead others through unreliable advertisements, and in the field of knowledge that Being preoccupied with Whatsapp messages reduces focus on task performance and facilitates the dissemination of ideas easily, and from the cultural consequencesof using Snapchat on the behavior of the female students in the cultural field, the predominance of entertainment and formal interests among female students and its role in dissemination of values contrary to our Islamic values and customs and in the field of education Students are seeing Snapchat as a tool to gain fame and show off and brag about. Given the importance of the role played by the social media in developing the social and intellectual mobility among the female university students, the researcher recommends to pay particular attention to this age group for their keen interest in knowledge to enable them to improve their skills according to their aspirations, thus contributing to the development of their society.