Social Media Use, Religious Distraction, and Secularization among University Students: Evidence from Public Universities in Multan, Pakistan

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore the perceptions of religious distraction of social media and individual level secularization among the university students of two public universities of Multan, Pakistan. The research design used was quantitative, cross-sectional, descriptive-correlational. The researcher developed questionnaire was used to collect data from 255 students measuring the demographic characteristics, religious distraction and secularization. Descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, independent-samples t-tests and one-way ANOVA were used for analysis. The results revealed that on the whole, students felt that social media negatively impacted their concentration during religious practices, negatively disrupted their Namaz, Juma'ah, zikr and majlis, and negatively affected their participation in religious activities. They also associated social media with secular, materialistic and worldly values. Individual-level secularization was positively and significantly associated with religious distraction, but the relationship was weak. There were significant differences in religious distraction between the gender and age groups, and secularization did not differ significantly between the gender and age or study programme groups. The study emphasizes the importance of responsible social media usage and the need for digital-religious literacy