International Students: Challenges, Social Media Use, and Adaptation

Abstract

Social media are an inseparable part of our lives, offering tools for communication, information sharing, and social interaction. For international students, these platforms can help overcome challenges such as cultural adaptation, academic pressures, and social isolation. Using the ‘Swiss Army knife’ metaphor, this paper highlights the adaptability of social media platforms in meeting diverse user needs, such as seeking information, maintaining connections, and fostering support. Affordances like visibility, persistence, and anonymity enable international students to connect with their home cultures, explore the host country’s norms, and document their personal journeys. Yet, these same platforms can reinforce boundaries that hinder their integration into the host culture. The uses and gratifications (U&G) theory helps explain motivations behind social media use, such as social interaction, information seeking, escapism, and self-expression. This study will collect public posts on X, Instagram, TikTok and Reddit with hashtags relevant to international students. I will apply thematic analysis to identify themes and patterns in these posts, exploring how key motivations and affordances shape students’ online behaviours and adaptation strategies. Insights from this study will contribute to the broader understanding of social media’s impact on international students’ adjustment, emphasizing how affordances and user motivations intersect to shape their experiences in the host country.