Abstract
Background: Social media is a key part of the everyday lives of students, impacting their relationships and learning. When used more often, however, these can become addictive and can affect academic performance. Objective: This study's aimed to evaluate and examine the relationship between social media addiction and academic performance of undergraduate nursing students of Mardan. Methods: 197 undergraduate nursing students were selected using convenient sampling technique from four nursing colleges of Mardan and a cross-sectional analysis was conducted. The data was gathered through a structured self-administered questionnaire with five-point Likert scale to assess social media use, use purpose, and behaviors associated with social media addiction. Mean scores were used to calculate Social Media Addiction (SMA) scores, which had a reliability check confirmed (Cronbach’s α = 0.804). Student's achievement was evaluated by their self-reported CGPA. Spearman Rank Order correlation was used in SPSS version 27; due to the non-normal distribution of the data, the significance level was established at p< .05. Results: Most of the participants expressed frequent use of social media platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp for learning and entertainment. A lot of students admitted that using social media negatively affected their academic work and led to addiction. The statistical analysis, however, showed that the correlation between the variables of social media addiction and academic performance was weak, negative (rₛ = −0.022, p = .756) and was not significant (p = .756). Conclusion: The findings showed that using social media was prevalent and common behaviors linked to social media addiction was common among nursing undergraduates, and there was no discernible link between social media addiction and academic achievement. This implies that students can use social media successfully for both learning and other activities.