Abstract

The study aimed to discover the nature of the relationship between the Big Five personality traits and the usage of social media. The research sample of (528) male and female undergraduates from AL Sharqiyah university in the Sultanate of Oman distributed according to gender, academic level, and scientific college. The results indicated that the use of social media platforms was at a mediocre level with an average of (2.41) and at a percentage of 48%. Moreover, the results demonstrated that agreeableness is the most common trait followed by openness to experience and conscientiousness, extraversion and neuroticism as the least common traits. Further results showed that there is a negative correlation between the degree of social media platform usage and agreeableness, and extraversion, as well as a positive correlation with openness to experience and neuroticism. In the analytical findings of the standard multiple linear regression, the data pointed that the personality traits explained up to (27%) of the variety in social media platform use and all the personality traits had a statistical significance in predicting the degree of social media use