Abstract

The increasing availability of smartphones and affordable internet services has made social media a routine part of everyday life. Although educational qualification is often linked with digital literacy and technology use, its influence on social media engagement has received relatively little attention in India. The present study explored whether educational qualification predicts social media engagement among adults. Data were collected from 121 participants (18–35 years) residing in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, using the Social Networking Time Use Scale (SONTUS). Based on their scores, participants were classified into low, moderate, and high social media engagement groups. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize participant characteristics and platform preferences, while Pearson’s chi-square test and multinomial logistic regression were employed to examine the association and predictive role of educational qualification. WhatsApp was the most commonly used platform across all educational groups, followed by Instagram. The results showed a significant association between educational qualification and social media engagement, χ²(6) = 16.46, p = .011, with a small-to-moderate effect size (Cramer’s V = .261). Multinomial logistic regression also indicated that educational qualification significantly improved the prediction of social media engagement categories, χ²(6) = 16.82, p = .010, although the explained variance was modest (Nagelkerke R² = .148). These findings suggest that educational qualification contributes to differences in social media engagement, while also indicating that digital behaviour is shaped by several additional individual and contextual factors.