Social media addiction, critical thinking and achievement emotions among EFL students in Thailand

Abstract

Social media use has grown tremendously and has led to research in terms of its addictive power. The purpose of this study was to explore the link among social media addiction, critical thinking, and achievement emotions. Using path analysis, a sample was drawn from 229 university students. The results indicated that social media addiction has a strong negative relationship with achievement emotions and a weak negative relationship with critical thinking. Critical thinking has a weak positive relationship with achievement emotions. The final model with critical thinking and social media addiction explains 27% of the variance of achievement emotions. This indicates that students should exercise care with their social media use as individuals who agree with statements indicating addiction also agree with statements related to having negative emotions towards achievement in an academic context.