ABSTRACT
The study investigated “Social Media and Social Adjustment of Senior Secondary School Students in Uyo Local Education Committee”. Descriptive survey research design was adopted for the study. The population of this study consisted of 5422 SS2 students. A sample of 357 was used for the study. However, 200 students successfully returned their questionnaire which was used for analysis. A researcher-made instrument titled “Social Media and Social Adjustment of Senior Secondary School Students Questionnaire” (SMSASSSSQ) was used to collect data for the study. The SMSASSSSQ instrument was structured in a 4-point rating scale with the response options of Strongly Agree (SA) 4 points, Agree (A) 3 points, Disagree (D) 2 points and Strongly Disagree (SD) 1 points. The research instrument was face validated by three research experts from the Department of Educational Foundations, Guidance and Counselling, Faculty of Education, University of Uyo, Uyo. The reliability of the research instrument SMSASSSSQ was tried-out on randomly selected 30 secondary school students who were not part of the main study. Cronbach alpha reliability formula was used to determine the internal consistency of the instrument which stood at 0.67 for facebook, 0.70 for whatsapp, 0.62 for twitter, 0.56 snap chat and 0.70 for social adjustment. The average of these reliability indices was 0.65. The research assistants administered and collected the completed copies within a space of one week. Out of 357 copies of the questionnaire administered on the respondents, 200 copies representing 56% were appropriately filled and returned to the researcher and were used for analyses. 92 copies representing 26% were inappropriately filled and 65 copies representing 18% were not returned.The research questions were answered using mean statistics, while the null hypotheses (1-4) were tested with dependent t-test at 0.05 level of significance using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 25. Based on the findings of this study, it was concluded that there is a significant influence of Social Media variables such as facebook, whatsapp, twitter and snap chat on Social Adjustment of Senior Secondary School Students in Uyo Local Education Committee. In the light of the findings and conclusion drawn in this study, it was recommended among others that students should use facebook positively to promote social adjustment and self-development.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
Adjustment refers to an individual general adaptation to his environment and the demands of life such as the way he relates to other people that is, interpersonal behaviour, handle his responsibilities, deal with stress and meet with his own need and life satisfaction. The society is dynamic and change is the only constant thing, so the individual’s ability to review his attitude and behaviour is an essential ingredient in adjustment. According to Shumnger and Oneail (2014), adjustment has been analysed as an achievement as well as process in psychology.
Social adjustment is an effort by an individual to cope with standards, values and nee`ds of the society in order to be acceptable. It involves coping with new standards and values. Social adjustment includes how the person interacts with others and how the person conforms to social expectations (Davidson and Jackson, 2000). In technical application, social adjustment means getting along with members of the society as best as one can. In this regard, social adjustment means reaction to the demands and pressure of the social environment. One of the important elements of social adjustment and social integration is the social media.
In the current society, especially for the young generation, social media has become a part of everyday life. People have access to all types of information across the globe in the palm of hands using social media. Social media, such as facebook, twitter, yahoo, telegram, IMO, skype, messenger, whatsapp, snap chat, YouTube, 2go, palm chat, Tango, Skype, Google plus, Fickr, WeChat, Wikipedia, LinkedIn, Instagram, MySpace, Badoo, Digg, JISC, Blogs, and other chat sites have taken the technology world to a new level. The dramatic evolution of technology, especially new social media, has greatly influenced every facet of human society; the way people use time and space, and the perception of media (Chen, 2012). People are now logging on social media on mobile devices everywhere, at any time making it a common everyday activity and this can be confirmed which estimates that about 1.925 billion users of smart phones make use of their devices for social media in the world (Star, 2011).
More and more scholars have started recently to examine the influence of social media on human life (Piotrowski, 2012). Over the past decade, social media usage have increased substantially in popularity and become part of social practices (Boyd and Ellison, 2007). Social media positively contribute to increased people’s capacity for making and sustaining friendships as well as facilitating regular communication (Marshall, Bejanyan, Di Castro, and Lee, 2012). Due to the growth in social media usage, there is adverse effects and addictive behaviours among many users (Cao, Sun, Wan, Hao and Tao, 2011)).
Kuss and Griffiths (2011) observe that adolescents are at vulnerable period to various social media influences such as, cognitive, emotional, and physical. Currently excessive use of social media resulted in negative impact on maintaining daily routines, school performance, social and psychological wellbeing (Choi, 2007; Sirgy, 2006 and Rickert, 2001). Furthermore, Kalpidou, Costin and Morris, (2011); Niemz (2005), suggested that frequently using social media was related to lower self-esteem, and were more socially disinherited than non-users.