IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA USAGE ON ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OF UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS IN GHANA COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY UNIVERSITY

ABSTRACT The study was designed to identify the impact of social media usage on academic performance of undergraduate students of Ghana Communication Technology University (GCTU), Accra. The survey method was adopted for this study. The objectives of this study were to find out the purpose of visit to these social media platforms, to analyse the average time spent on these platforms, to discover the effects of these platforms on the academic performance of students and to examine related problems in the usage of the platforms. 800 students were selected as sample for the study. Random sampling technique was employed for sample selection. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS version 20) was used to analyze the data. From the findings, it was concluded that despite public views concerning the misuse of social media among the youth, most of the students were interested to use social media positively for their academic purposes. The study recommended that counselling programs must be designed for students to understand themselves and manage their study time to avoid social media misuse