Abstract
The study investigated the influence of smart phones and social networking sites on the academic performance of secondary school students in Amwuwo-Odofin local government area of Lagos State. The descriptive research design was adopted for this study. Three (3) public secondary schools were selected from the list of Public Schools in Amuwo-Odofin Local Government Area of Lagos State using the Simple Random Sampling Technique. Two hundred (200) students were selected using stratified Random Sample Technique. The research instrument used was a four point modified Rennis Likert Rating Scale Questionnaire type. Five research questions were raised and five hypotheses were formulated. Data analyses was done using the descriptive statistics of frequency counts and percentages to answer research questions while the hypotheses formulated were tested using chii-square and t-test – statistical tool at 0.05 level of significance. All stated null hypotheses were rejected.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
- Background of the study
The world is a comprehensive cyber community that has been connected by a network of wired and wireless devices through the World Wide Web (WWW). Today most of us have secured a room in cyber space by having email accounts, doing online transaction and through e-learning. Social networking sites are the main application under the umbrella of social media, which comes with the Web 2.0 era. Social media is the fastest growing web application in the 21st century. Technology addiction problem has been treated important, especially in the education field of secondary schools, because adolescent is more vulnerable to the addiction. However, smart phones addiction has become a more serious problem recently. Smart phones are the new generation of mobile phones; they have emerged over the last few years and already have conquered the market. Smart phones with their mini keyboards are not just phones, but have computer functions as email, calendar and address book and office programs for reading and editing. The multimedia phone features such as camera, video, sound recordings or podcasting is advanced and can compete with specialized equipment
With the growing of gadgets embedded in modern mobile phones (particularly 3G and 4G phones) such as MP3,Internet and the decrease in the size and price of such devices, mobile phones has become omnipresent. The mobile phone is an anytime and anywhere tool, boosting the tendency to the things discretely as well as openly. The fact is that with the use Of cell phones, people sometimes lose the capacity to manage the boundaries between appropriate and inappropriate usage. (Ling. 1997) In this current technology, the use of social networking sites(such as Face book, twitter, WhatsApp, Skype, Instagram, e.t,.c) has become a common place for this generation of college students (Hanson, Drumheller, Mallard, Mckee & Schlegel,2011). Connecting to these social networking sites has become easier and more convenient with the increased popularity of wireless technology. This has contributed to an increase of more than one billion people logging on to these sites daily. Young adults, 18_29 years old, are the most active user of wireless technology, 81%are active users (Lenhart, Purcell, Smith & Zickuhr, 2010). The demand for social networking sites among college students is significant.92% of all under graduates students are members of social media (Junco & Cotton, 2012). As college students are increasingly adopting social media, it is important for faculty and administrators in higher education institutions to understand how this is influencing student’s academic performance.
1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
The invention of technology such as mobile phones has no doubt brought about immense positive progress to human societies, but this invention equally brought about in its wake some observed attitudinal problems among secondary schools students. However, this is not to say that these problems are solely caused by the usage of these phones as there are other causes, but that the attitudes of the users and the modes of the usage are significantly the contributing factors especially in the 21st century. Scholars have identified the problems associated with the phone usage and time (Junco, Merco and Salter, 2010_Wei and Lo, 2006), the attachment to phones (Gaser, 2006), in the face of this, therefore, there is the need to establish the link between these observations and academic performance. In analyzing the problem of these internet phones, and in order to synchronize and have a clearer understanding of the problem as it is related- to this study, it must be borne in mind that other varying platforms of distractions towards the academic performance of the secondary school students are also implicated, such as the computer usages, which generate internet social networking sites, and the visual display devices for relaxation such as televisions.
In addition to this, there is high tendency of students to interact with their phone in the class in the course of lectures, either to respond to received messages, or to browse the internet. These, no doubt, take a heavy toll on the level of concentration devoted to the lectures. Even while outside the classroom environment, most students who use internet enabled phones devotes much time interacting with their phones by chatting on Twitter 2go, Facebook, Instant messages (Bbm, Yahoo messenger). Consequently, the time that ought to have been devoted to study and other useful academic endeavours are thus frittered away.
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