Factors affecting nursing and midwifery students' attitudes toward social media

Abstract

With the advancement of technology, social media use increases day by day, especially among university students. This descriptive and correlational research was conducted with the aim of investigating attitudes of nursing and midwifery students towards social media in terms of certain variables. The population of the research comprised students studying at the nursing and midwifery department of a health college (N = 336), and the sample of the research constituted students who were chosen using accidental sampling from the population (n = 254). A Student Information Form and the Social Media Attitude Scale were used for data collection. It was identified that 73% of the students studied nursing and 64.2% used social media for various reasons. The averages scores for total score, social competence, need for sharing, relationship with the teachers, and social isolation dimensions of Social Media Attitude Scale were found as 72.19 +/- 10.92 (23-115), 14.17 +/- 4.87 (6-30), 27.65 +/- 6.08 (8-40), 7.50 +/- 3.20 (3-15), and 13.14 +/- 5.01 (6-30), respectively. It was observed that nursing and midwifery students had positive attitudes towards social media. Furthermore, although the personal characteristics of students do not affect their attitudes towards social media, the features of social media have a statistically significant effect on students attitudes towards social media.