Does U.S. College Students’ Social Media Use Affect School E-Mail Avoidance and Campus Involvement?

This study examines how U.S. college students’ social media use affects their schoole-mail avoidance and campus involvement. We found that text-messaging is the most frequentlyused medium for college students in general. However, communication and business studentsare more likely to use social media as the primary communication medium than other majors andthey are more likely to be involved in the campus community. We created a typology of twosocial media user types by the specific combination of social media outlets they use and thefrequency of use in those outlets as “instant communicators” and “online content curators” basedon factor analysis. Increased use of social media leads to lower school e-mail avoidance. Upperclassstudents are more likely to avoid school e-mails. Facebook is the only social media outletpositively related to campus involvement. Implications of the findings on the use of social mediafor college educators and marketers and effective reach of college students are discussed