THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON STUDENTS ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE IN HIGHER INSTITUTIONS

CHAPTER ONE

1.1   BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

        Recently, there has been considerable discussion regarding the frequent use of social media tools (e.g. Face book, Myspace, Twitter, Xanga, Friendsker) by high school and college students, and the possible effect of those tools on student’s academic performance (Comnolly, 2011: Hargitai and Hsieh, 2010). At the core of the project work is whether the growing use of social media by higher institution student actually improves or worsen a student’s academic performance. With the expected continued growth in the usage of these tools by students as early as secondary school level (Anderson and Rainie 2012), this issue has wide spread implication particularly for areas of education.

        Academic performance is not a concept that is new many social scientist and researchers alike have defined academic performance in various ways. Bruce Tuckman (1975) asserts that performance is used to label the observation manifestation of knowledge, skill concept and understanding and idea. So performance is the application of a learning product that at the end of the process mastery. It is the product acquisition of particular grades on examination; it shows or indicates the students’ ability, mastery of content, skill in applying learned knowledge to a particular situation. A student is generally judged on examination performance (Banquil et al., 2000).

        A student’s academic performance basically show how he or she has benefited form being explored to an academic programme, often this shows after an evaluation, done in terms of an examination either at the end of semester, session or even after the completion of the programme. Most institution use C.P.G.A, as a measure of academic performance and it vary from institution to institution.

        The used of social media by students, especially face book, the most common social media to communicate and explore different interesting information. Through this everyone can say that getting addicted with social media will greatly affect the student’s academic performance.

        The young people especially the student nowadays are prone with the use of different technologies. Sometimes they are getting tired in doing their homework and in studying their lessons and because of this, they rather surf on internet and open them to have some fun. Nonis and Hudson (2006) stated that student already “spend too little time studying” due to their busy lives. Here in the selected institution in Kwara State Student use to focus with their studies for their chosen course is not that easy. If a students get addicted to face book and spend too much time for it definitely he will find it hard to deal with his academic performance.

        In fact there were many internet shops found outside the selected institution environment which are found to be loaded by student from different department. The social media addiction by the student is a great challenge that need to face in order for them to handle and maintain their good performance in school.

        The social media addiction among student is a very popular issue that still needs to be observed and solve by the student on their own. They must learn to considered their behaviour in performing any actions. Indeed, there is nothing wrong in using social media what’s matter most was the discipline within their own selves.

        Many students rely on the accessibility of information on social media specifically and that means a reduced on learning and retaining information. Students who attempt to multi-task, checking social media sites while studying may have their academic  performances affected either positively  or  negatively. According to their grades we can determine the academic performance of students. It says that if the students earns high grades it means that he/she studies a lot, while low grades indicates less studying.

        Academic performance focuses and concentrate on your having the right mind – set for raising your academic performance so you can learn more effectively. It is how students deal with their studies and how they cope with or accomplish different tasks give to them by their lecturers.

        At the core of this project work is whether the growing use of social media in the selected higher institution in Kwara State if it actually improves or worsens a student’s academic performance. With the expected continued growth in the usage of those tools (e.g. face-book, 2go, wht’s up) by students as raises a concern on the  effectiveness of their educational  career or performance.

        Just as the term social media has obtained a fairly board meaning, the term generally refers to internet – based communication that allow individuals and groups to interact. Social media specifically refer to those internet based services that: promote online social interaction between two or more person within a bounded system for the purpose of friendship, meeting other persons and/or exchanging information; contains a functionality that let users create public or semi – public personal profile pages that contain information of their own choosing; serves as a mechanism to communicate with other users; and contains mechanisms that allow users to search for other users according to some specific criteria (Zwarti Lindsay, Henderson 2011).

        Social media such as face book, my space, linked and twitter are good example of sites that meet the previously stated criteria. Social media use overall grown significantly since 2005 with some estimate of nearly 78% of student using social media. In terms of daily usage more recent estimate shows face-book as having over 750million. Use worldwide, YouTube having over 3billion views each day; Twitter having over 177million tweets per day, why good percentage of this population are student (Chen and Bryer, 2012).

        As related to this research exploratory study, the previous statistics indicate that social media tend to have the highest usage rate among traditionally – aged higher institution student (that is those under 30years).

        The academic performance of these students, social media and academic performance, the issue of where social media helps or hurts or a student academic performance is often couched in larger issues identified with the overall use of social media (e.g. it psychological effect, privacy & safety concerns, individual self-discipline and self regulation concerns, human adaptability concerns) Roseri and Conolly 2011.

1.2   STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

        Social media website, such as facebook, twitter and linkedIn) are currently used by many people to connect with their friends and relative around the globe (Dale and Lewis 2013). The use of the various social media platforms has grown so fast that it has even attracted the attention of higher institution students; they are so engrossed in the site that they have almost completely forgotten about their academic work higher institution student are considered victims of social media site more than group of people as they negatively impact of their academic performance (Windham, 2007).

        Higher institution students easily get tempted to use the various social media platforms when trying to obtain learning material online. In most cases, the students end up spending almost all their times on the social media and forget about the course materials they originally intended to look for (Guffery & Almonte, 2010).

        Social media serve as a significant distraction for academic performance of student. Facebook, the most popular social media site, was specifically design for undergraduates and is the most popular social media site, was specifically designed for undergraduates and is the most frequently used. Therefore, time spent on social media may affect academic performance. For example time spent on facebook may directly affect and/or moderate the relationship between traditional predictors of academic performance (i.e. ACT scores, high school GPA, study time, etc and college GPA vital to the lives of many college student.

        Addition of social media increase short attention spans and subverted higher – order reasoning skills such as, concentration, persistence and analytical reasoning among students frequently use social media; a tendency to overestimate one’s ability to multi-task and manage projects; and technology being seen as a substitute for the analytical reasoning process.

        The risk plays a vital role in student’s academic performance to various degrees and at various times.

1.3   PURPOSE OF THE STUDY

        The purpose of this study was to begin exploring the possible impact of social media use on the academic performance of students attending the selected higher institution is Kwara State. The study primary goal is to identify key themes, trends and/or perception that can be used as a foundation for more in-depth empirical research, and can be used to develop policy recommendation to deal with this growing phenomenon.

A qualitative research design was used and three preliminary research question were formed to guide this study. How common is the use of social media (i.e. facebook, myspace, twitter & LinkIn) among college students for those students who do utilize social networking site on average? How long do they on those site collectively per day and/or per week? How does the academic performance of students compared between students who utilize social media sites and students who do not use social media sites? Findings from this seem to confirm performance.

        In addition student ability to concentrate on the task at hand is significantly reduced by the distractions that are brought about by the social media tools. The more time students spend on social media and the spread at which information is published, has created a lax attitude towards proper spelling and grammer. Thus reduces a student’s ability to effectively write without relying on a computer’s spell check features.

        Social media has emerged as a term frequently used to describe different types of communication platforms and electron ways of interacting. This research work will utilize the definition of social media developed by Bryer and Zavataro (2008) as being “technologies that facilitate social interaction, make possible collaboration and enable deliberation across stakeholders.

        Utilizing the definition, social media includes such tools as electronic blogs, audio/video tools (e.g. YouTube), Internet chat rooms and others. While all the previous tools can and do facilitate the impact of social media on student academic performance.

        Social media specifically refer to those interact – based services that promote online social interaction between two or more persons within a bounded system for the purpose of friendship, meeting other persons and/or exchanging information contain a functionality that lets users create public or semi – public personal profile page that contain information of their own.

        In conclusion the purpose of this study was to explored the impact of social media on students academic performance in the selected institution in Kwara State.

1.4   SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

        The study is quiet significant in considering the problem area which the study is predicted upon which is the impact of social media on academic performance of the student.

        The goal is to identify key themes, trends and/or perception that can be used as a foundation for more in-depth empirical research. The study presents the first step in examining this issue for the purpose of developing research grounded policy. While offering recommendation that can improve proper usage of the social media.

1.5   SCOPE AND LIMITATION

        The research was carried out in the selected institution in Kwara State. To respond to questionnaire the student takes care on impact of social media on academic performance of students in higher institution while such impact of social media might be in existence through irregular studying online and social interaction to keep activities in schools lives.

        This study was mainly concentrated on the impact of social media on the academic performance of students in higher institutions. It needs to be clearly and specifically stated that the study was conducted only in the selected higher institutions and was not extended from the selected institution. Kwara State polytechnic and University of Ilorin.

1.1   DEFINITION OF THE TERMS

        To avert the problem of confusion and misunderstanding of the research work, these are the definition of some key terms used such as social media, academic performance and higher institution.

Social media – Refer to the means of interaction among people in which they create, share and exchange information and users to virtual, commodities and networks. Andreas Kaplan (2006) define social media as “a group of internet based application that build on the ideological and technological foundation of web and that allow the creation and exchange of their generated content. In addition is a medium in which people interact, chat associate through use of internet.

Academic performance – This is defined as the information to student’s academic records at the institution, it also refer to the outcome or the extent to which student has achieved their educational success is measured by academic performance or how well a student meat standard set out by the institution.

Higher institution – This is defined as a vocational programme that provides training for gainful employment and has been in existence for at least two year – it can also refer to an institution that admit as regular student only persons having a certificate of graduation from a school providing secondary education or the recognized equivalent of such a certificate, is also legally authorized within such state provide program of education beyond secondary education.

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