| Summary: | The universal growth of social media usage among tertiary students has been linearly associated with academic performance. As social media use continues its constant growth, its application among tertiary students is inevitable. Its influence on academic performance turns out to be an ever more important question to think about. Researchers have mixed results, some found social media usage having little to no effect, and others found negative and positive effects on academic performance. Using a sample of 808 students in ten public tertiary institutions, this study makes an effort on how to deal with these differing outcomes and to investigate the effect of social media usage on tertiary students’ academic performance. We explored the relationship of the frequency of students’ use of social media for educational purposes and their academic performance, as measured by their cumulative grade point average (i.e., CGPA) with academic self-efficacy and innovation characteristics as mediator and moderator, respectively. The results revealed that social media usage for educational purposes positively related to academic performance. It also demonstrated that the use of social media can negatively affect academic performance. This study makes it more noticeable the effect of academic self-efficacy as a mediator in further improving the academic performance of students. Additionally, the empirical results of the study demonstrated that the moderating effect of innovation characteristics between social media usage and academic performance was stronger. The practical relevance of the study is to help governments, politicians, policy makers, students, educational institutions, and other stakeholders to carve specific policies, guidelines, and initiatives in support of social media usage as an innovative and effective tool for learning and sustainable academic performance.
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