Excessive media use in class and university students’ academic performance: the mediation effect of online vigilance and gender differences

ABSTRACT

It is prevalent for university students to spend a large amount of time and effort on media use during classes. Previous studies have proposed that there is an inconsistent conclusion about the effect of excessive media use on academic performance; that is, some research proposes negative effect while the other argues no effect. Therefore, the present study draws on the Stimuli-Organism-Response (SOR) framework, and adopts online vigilance as the organism that mediates the relationship between three dimensions of excessive media use in class (i.e., excessive social use (ESU), excessive hedonic use (EHU), and excessive cognitive use (ECU) and academic performance. Gender differences about the effect of excessive media use in class are also tested. Our empirical findings (n = 457) indicate a full mediation of online vigilance, confirming its organism role. Gender differences of the effect of excessive media use are also confirmed. In addition, our post-doc analysis further indicated that the effect of ECU on academic performance is fully mediated by ESU/EHU and online vigilance. This study enriches the literature of excessive media use in educational area, and emphasizes the importance of university students’ psychological states over the media use per se when predicting academic performance.

KEYWORDS:

• Excessive media use in class
• online vigilance
• SOR framework
• academic performance
• mediation effect
• gender differences

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Data will be available on request.

Additional information

Funding

The work is supported by the Foundational Research Funds for the Central Universities (SWU2209211, SWU2209212), the Education and Teaching Reform Research Project of Southwest University (2023JY054, 2023JY055).; Innovation Research 2035 Pilot Plan (Action Plan for Smart Education) of Southwest University ; Humanities and Social Science Youth Project by Ministry of Education.

Notes on contributors

Chunxiao Yin

Chunxiao Yin is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Education, Southwest University, China. Her current research interests include Educational IT integration, Digital learning resources, and Learning analytics.

Ying Tang

Ying Tang is an Associate Professor of Educational Technology at the Faculty of Education, Southwest University. Her research interests lie in student learning in technology-mediated environment, instructional design, and computer-mediated communication.

Liang Yu

Liang Yu is a Professor of Educational Technology at the Faculty of Education, Southwest University. His research interests lie in learning science and technology, STEAM education, and distance education.

Lirui Li

Lirui Li is an Associate Professor of Educational Technology at the Faculty of Education, Southwest University. He is interested in educational robots, blended learning design, and social media.