Impact of social media on academics: a fractional order mathematical model

Due to the COVID pandemic and lockdown, usage of social platforms increased for academic and non-academic purposes. As a result, students are at significant risk of developing social media addiction, so techniques to control social media addiction throughout society are required. There are several positive and negative ways in which social media affects the academic performance of a student. Most of the mathematical models exclude the past of an individual, which is critical for controlling social media consumption. Hence, this study offers a fractional-order mathematical model to analyze the impact of social media on academics. There are two equilibrium points for the proposed model: social web-free and endemic equilibrium. Based on an evaluation of the threshold value, the social web-free equilibrium point is globally asymptotically stable whenever the threshold value is less than one. Endemic equilibrium points exist when the threshold value is greater than 1. Additionally, numerical simulations have been performed to examine changes in population dynamics and validate analytical outcomes. In summary, the findings of this research reveal that social media addiction decreases as the order of the derivative decreases, demonstrating the high efficiency of a fractional-order model over an integer-order model.