What’ s your status? Investigating the effects of social media on the students of Fiji National University Akash Dutt Dubey 1 & Mumtaz Alam 2 & Rani Roop Rekha 3 Received: 22 November 2017 /Accepted: 18 May 2018 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2018 Abstract Since the last decade, one of the most noteworthy changes in our daily lives has been the efficacious invasion of Social Media and Social Networking Sites (SNS). Social media has affected the whole world in a rather contagious manner and the education sector is no exception. While there is no denying that social media and networking sites have affected us immensely, it is the need of the hour that their positive as well as negative effects must be analyzed. This research work concentrates on the students of the Fiji National University and scrutinizes the effects of social media and networking sites on their behavior as well as their education. For this study, personal communication as well as questionnaire analysis were done. According to this study, the students in Fiji have been affected both in a positive as well as in negative manner by the social media and social networking sites. The study also certain interventions that can be done to scale down the negative impacts on the students and help them in improving their performance in the colleges. Keywords Fiji . Higher education . Social media . Social networking sites . Facebook . Instagram Educ Inf Technol https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-018-9744-0 * Akash Dutt Dubey drakashddubey@gmail.com Mumtaz Alam mumtaz.alam@fnu.ac.fj Rani Roop Rekha ranirekha13@yahoo.com 1 Jaipuria Institute of Management, Jaipur, India 2 Fiji National University, Suva, Fiji 3 Department of Secondary Education, Lami High School, Suva, Fiji