How social media use is related to student engagement and creativity: investigating through the lens of intrinsic motivation

Recent research reveals that the social media usage has been rapidly increased in higher education. Yet we know a little about the consequences of social media use among students. The current study is an attempt to understand how and when the use of social media by the students is related to their academic engagement and creativity. We collected the primary data from 267 graduate and undergraduate students enrolled at different universities situated in the Hefei city of the Anhui province of China. Findings reveal that social media use by the students is positively related to their creativity and academic engagement through intrinsic motivation while cyberbullying plays a boundary condition role on these relationships such that the direct and indirect relationships are weak when cyberbullying is higher. Important practical and theoretical implications as well as limitations and directions for future research have been discussed.