Social media applications (SMAs) significantly impact higher education by affecting students, professors, and institutions through various features that may improve learning, communication, and collaboration. However, many studies have focused on the initial use of SMAs, rarely considering their post-adoption and continued usage. Additionally, there are growing concerns about the privacy behaviour of SMA users, which remains inadequately examined. Therefore, this study explores the impact of perceived privacy on the relationship between tripartite quality constructs, user satisfaction, and continual usage using DeLone and McLean’s information system success (ISS) model. This study surveyed 384 SMA users among university lecturers through a convenience sampling approach, and SmartPLS 4, nonparametric software, was used to analyse the data. These findings elucidate the elements affecting SMA usage, suggesting that service and information quality influence continual usage. The tripartite quality constructs correlate with users’ satisfaction, which robustly correlates with continual usage. In addition, perceived privacy influences the links between service quality, system quality, and continual usage. This study finds that perceived privacy is crucial to DeLone and McLean’s ISS model. Hence, information privacy must be ensured to create more secure, functional, and engaging applications. Suppliers and developers should focus on improving app quality, security, and protection, which are precursors to user satisfaction and continual usage. This study examines the moderating role of perceived privacy in DeLone and McLean’s model. Its strong predictive model demonstrates the theoretical robustness of the ISS model for studying the continual usage of SMAs.