Social Media and Study Habits of Secondary School Students in Anambra State, Nigeria

This study investigated social media use and study habits of secondary school students in Anambra State. Three research questions guided the study while four null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. The design of the study was descriptive survey. The population of the study is 4,996 consisting of Senior Secondary Two (SS2) students from public secondary schools in Awka Education Zone of Anambra State. The sample size consisted of 500 students chosen from their local governments and were randomly chosen. The instrument used for the study was Social Media Use Questionnaire and Study Habit Inventory. The instrument was validated by three experts and reliability index established to be 0.82. The instrument was distributed to the respondents and collected back immediately after filling. Statistical weighted mean was used to answer research question one while summated scores was used to answer research question two and three. t-test was used to test hypotheses one, two and three while Pearson Correlation Statistics was used to test hypotheses four at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study revealed that students access various social media but mostly accesses facebook, whatsapp and yahoo. Majority of the students 429 indicated that they have good pre-study habit while 326 students also indicated that they have good study habit. The findings also showed that student differ significantly in ten out of 21 social media they access due to gender. It is also observed that there no significant difference in the mean scores of male and female on their pre-study habit. There is also no significant difference in the mean scores of male and female students on their study habit. The finding also revealed that there is no significant relationship between students use of social media and study habit(r=0.02, p=0.57 ). Based on the findings the study recommended that Teachers, parents, guardians and school management should monitor their students on their use of social media even though it was observed in this study that social media has no significant effect on their study habit. They should also guide and inform them properly on the vulnerability they may face on these sites if not utilized in moderation