THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON STUDENTS PERFORMANCE

ABSTRACT

The downward movement of academic output in Nigeria, especially in the past few decades, has raised issues of concern for every academically minded Nigerian. This deterioration has been attributed to many factors suspiciously Social media, one of the latest breakthroughs in technology, have also been suspected recently by many to be responsible for low academic performance in the secondary schools. This research was carried out to examine the influence of social media on academic achievement of secondary school students studying Government. The researcher choose the Senior Secondary School, Two (SS2) students in Ovia North East Local Government Area of Edo State, Nigeria as the population for this study. A sample of 100 students from a total of Nine Hundred and Sixty-Six (966) SS2 students. In the study area was used for the study. The researcher explored different control variables in relation to social media use as a guide to examining its impact on students. The study examined students’ exposure to social media, the people they relate with on social media, activities students engage in on social media, how long they stay online and the type of social media sites students patronize. The Ex post facto was adopted as the research design for this study. To obtain the relevant data, the structured questionnaire and achievement test were administered to the respondents. The research questions were answered by frequency count and percentages from the data collected with the questionnaire while the research hypothesis was tested using the student test via the Chi-square.