Social Media Ethics among Polytechnic Students: Assessing Awareness and Responsible Use

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-745-3_19How to use a DOI?

Keywords

social media; ethics; awareness; responsible use; polytechnic student

Abstract

The rapid growth of social media has required a high level of digital ethics among higher education students to ensure both personal safety and future employability. This study aims to examine the level of social media awareness and responsible use among students at Politeknik Balik Pulau (PBU) and explores the relationship between these two constructs. Adopting a quantitative research design, data were collected from 221 respondents across various departments and semesters. The structured questionnaire was adapted from the Digital Citizenship instrument. Descriptive analysis revealed that students possess a significant of Digital Awareness (M = 4.32, SD = 0.78) and demonstrate commendable levels of Responsible Use (M = 4.34, SD = 0.73). Specifically, students showed the highest competence in protecting personal information (M = 4.50, SD = 0.77) and maintaining digital security (M = 4.43, SD = 0.88). Furthermore, Pearson correlation analysis indicated a strong, positive and significant relationship between awareness and responsible behavior (r = 0.818, p < 0.01). It suggests that increased ethical knowledge directly translates into professional digital behaviour. These findings imply that the current digital literacy environment at PBU is effective in preparing students for the professional workforce. This study contributes to educational institutions by showing that digital ethics education in polytechnic curricula is important for encouraging responsible use of social media and developing ethical digital citizenship among students. The findings also provide useful insights for educators and policymakers to improve ethical awareness in digital technology environments. A future study could examine the impact of digital ethics education on student behavior in real workplace environments, particularly with regard to professional communication, data privacy and responsible use of digital platforms.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this license to share adapted material derived from this chapter or parts of it.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Shardilla Mohamad Sarif
AU  - Nurkhuzaimah Fazreen Mohd Jalaluddin
AU  - Norhanisha Yusof
AU  - Nur Naimah Mohamad Yusof
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/08/24
TI  - Social Media Ethics among Polytechnic Students: Assessing Awareness and Responsible Use
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Research, Innovation, Sustainability, and Educations (IRISECON 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 277
EP  - 285
SN  - 3091-4442
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-745-3_19
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-745-3_19
ID  - Sarif2026
ER  -