Impact of Social Media on English Language Learning Among First-Year Students at Qassim University

The diverse aspects and networks of social media have wielded a remarkably profound impact on both individual lives and the broader societal, economic, and political landscape of its users. Language patterns used by conversational partners on social media have been influenced significantly. This study aims to investigate how the English language learning process of non-native Saudis has been impacted by the use of social media. To investigate these effects, a quantitative methodology was employed through the distribution of an online questionnaire to selected groups of first-year students at Qassim University, Saudi Arabia. Responses from 47 participants from different genders were analyzed using measures of central tendency and other statistical measures. The findings revealed that first-year Qassim University students consider social media platforms to be beneficial for improving their L2 proficiency and evaluate them to have an overall positive impact on various language learning skills. Based on these findings, it is reasonable to indicate that social media can be a significantly helpful tool in improving English language learning. These results were subjective to variables related to gender and the multimodal nature of specific aspects of social media. The study implies that employing social media networks can illustrate a more student-centered approach to language learning through the facilitation of interactive collaboration and information exchange, resulting in enhanced syntactic and lexical complexity.