No Relation Between Social Media Use During Teacher-Supervised Activities and Exam Results in Students Medicine and Biomedical Sciences

This article was migrated. The article was not marked as recommended. In addition to the potential benefits of mobile technology in (bio)medical education, mobile technology can also be used for personal use and access to social media. In this study, we explored the relation between (study-related) use of social media and exam results in a cohort of 259 Dutch students enrolled in Medicine (n=211) and Biomedical Sciences (n=48) programs. Self-reported social media use was scored for the use of internet, Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp and SMS during teacher-supervised activities (e.g. lectures, interactive lectures and group assignments). Subsequently, students scored whether use was study-related on a continuous scale. We found a highly prevalent use of social media during teacher-supervised activities (97%), with a relatively small portion being study-related (30±24%). We divided students into: 1.Low user+low study-related, 2.Low user+high study-related, 3.High user+low study-related, and 4.High user+high study-related. Exam results did not differ between groups (ANOVA; P=0.45). Moreover, we found no relation between exam result versus social media use (r 2 =0.002, P=0.49) or study-related social media use (r 2 =0.007, P=0.18). In summary, we found no evidence that the amount and/or type of social media use during teacher-supervised activities significantly relate to exam results in a cohort of Dutch (bio)medical students.