Presenter: Yufei Wang

Title: Educational Environment of Digital Behavior: Social Media Addiction and Academic Delay among Chinese University Student

Type of Presentation: Poster

Abstract

My interest in this topic comes from observation on how social media shapes students’ daily life and academic behaviors, particularly within a highly competitive education environment. This poster will explore how educational environment caused Chinese university students to have social media addiction. Some existing studies by scholars such as Pellegrino et al. (2022), Perakslis and Quintana (2023), Tang and He (2025), and Azizi et al. (2019) suggested that social media addiction negatively affects students’ self regulation, mental health and academic performance. However, these studies mainly focus on psychological aspects and pay less attention to the broader context. Accordingly, this project will ask how do educational expectations shape social media addiction and academic delay among Chinese university students? To answer this question, the study will use qualitative interviews among Chinese university students and Canadain university students to gather personal experiences. The results from Chinese university students will be compared with Canadian university students to examine whether different educational systems influence social media addiction. This project will expect the findings show that the high pressure and full time of studying caused Chinese students inable to control and regulate social media usage time. Limitations of this research is that educational approaches also vary across families, and it cannot be assumed that Chinese students necessarily come from households with high academic expectations, nor can the same assumption be made for Canadian students.

Biography

Yufei Wang is a first-year student in Vantage One Arts program UBC. Her research focuses on the contextual reasons caused by social media addiction among Chinese university students. She is personally interested in this topic because social media addiction can negatively affect students’ skill development and reduce productivity. This topic connects to my future studies in economics by exploring how digital behavior influences economic decision making, and long term economic outcomes.