Bridging Distances, Navigating Dilemmas: Social Media’s Role for Sub-Saharan African Students in Mor

Abstract

This study investigates how Sub-Saharan African international students in Morocco use social media to navigate cultural adaptation by conducting surveys with 64 students and interviews with 12 participants. Our findings show that students strategically manage their online identities for networking while employing selective sharing and self-censorship to balance self-expression with privacy concerns. These results highlight the need for social media platforms to offer customizable privacy settings and culturally sensitive features to better support the well-being and integration of international students.

Citation

Christianah Titilope Oyewale, Rafiat Bamimore Akodu, Tochukwu Ikwunne, and Houda Elmimouni. 2025. Bridging Distances, Navigating Dilemmas: Social Media’s Role for Sub-Saharan African Students in Morocco. In The 5th Biennial African Human Computer Interaction Conference (Africhi 2025), November 4–8, 2025, Cairo, Egypt. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 20 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/ 3757232.3757239