“Leave Me and My Facebook Alone!” Understanding College Students’ Relationship with Facebook and its Use for Academic Purposes

Facebook is by far the most ubiquitous social network in the world. While it has been studied extensively in its native social context, only recently has its use for academic purposes begun to be examined in earnest. In this study we utilize both qualitative and quantitative methodologies in multiple sections of required freshmen and senior courses at a liberal arts college (n = 245). To help delineate factors that cause students to accept (or resist) the use of Facebook by their professors, we draw from the well-established technology acceptance literature, adapting constructs known to predict acceptance and use of technology. Further, we develop new measures of “appropriateness” and “social purposes” to account for the unique context of integrating Facebook into college coursework. We provide recommendations for best practices, find a possible negative “Facebook Effect,” and show that the use of technology acceptance models is a promising avenue for future research.