Social Media and Students' Academic Performance

There is a deviation, distraction and divided attention between social media activities and students¿ academic work. Secondary school students in Nigeria are fascinated with social media and spend so much time on them. It is observed that students devote more attention to social media than they do to their studies. Performing well academically is a function of how effective ones reading and study habits are. Apart from the reading habit, another area that is of concern is the disruption of students¿ writing skills. Students now find it difficult to write long essays and even when they write, most words will be abbreviated or wrongly spelt. The study assessed the impact of social media on students¿ academic performance. A sample size of 248 respondents was determined from a population size of 1242 using the proportionate sampling technique. A total of 209 copies, of which the respondents agreed to using social media, were used. Mean and standard deviation were used in answering the research questions, while the Person Product Moment Correlation and T-test were used in testing the hypotheses. The study recommended that students should be better educated on the use of social media.