Demographic Predictors of Social Media Usage among Pre-service Teachers
Abstract: Social media usage among university students is increasingly prevalent. For pre-service teachers, understanding of their social media usage has been crucial for researchers and teacher educators alike because it helps inform our design of teacher education courses. This study aimed to determine whether demographic variables such as gender, age, IT-related learning experience and IT proficiency significantly predict social media usage among pre-service teachers in Hong Kong. Two hundred and twelve pre-service teachers participated in the study on a voluntary basis. Social media usage was assessed in terms of media sharing, Internet searching, and video gaming. Results of multiple regression analysis showed that the aforementioned demographic variables did not significantly predict media sharing and Internet searching. Yet they marginally significantly predicted video gaming and the two significant predictors were gender and age.