Influence of social networking sites on students’ academic and social lives: The Ghanaian Perspective.

This study investigates and analyses the positive and negative effects of social media on students’ academic and social lives. With the adoption of survey methodology, 204 students from University of Ghana and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology were randomly selected to participate in this study. The results of this study indicate that the positive effects of social media outweigh its negative counterpart hence, students should not be entirely discouraged from visiting social media sites. Among the following are some of the positive and negative effects of social media revealed in the study; the ability to seek the views of course mates on a certain topic at the comfort of their rooms , the opportunity to make more friends than in real life and the ability to be able to participate in group discussions were found to be the positive effects of social media on students in both institutions while reduction in the level of concentration in class, wasting of valuable time that could have been used to study, reduction in physical interaction (face-to-face interaction) and the promotion of shorthand writing which has the ability to affect the writing of good grammar were also found to be the negative effects of social media usage on students in both institutions