Effects of Facebook and WhatsApp on Academic Performance of UCC Students
Chapter One
Objectives Of The Study
The main objective of the study is to determine the Effects of Facebook and WhatsApp on academic performance of UCC students. Specifically, the Research Objectives are;
- To examine the reasons for students’ use of WhatsApp and Facebook
- To examine how students use WhatsApp and Facebook on campus
- To examine the negative effects of WhatsApp and Facebook on students’academic performance
- To examine the positive effects of WhatsApp and Facebook on students’ academic performance
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
Introduction
This chapter deals with the review of relevant literature pertaining to the effects of social media; taking into focus WhatsApp and Facebook on students’ academic performance. The review will entail the conceptual discussion, theories that have been applied to social media, empirical literature review about social media, controversies about social media and conclusion.
Conceptual Discussions
This aspect of the chapter presents the conceptual framework to the study. These concepts that have been explained include social media, academic performance, concept of WhatsApp and the concept of Facebook.
Concept of social media
Social media is that means that employs mobile and web based technology to create highly interactive platforms via which individuals and community share, co-create, discuss and modifies user-generated content (Kietzmannn, 2012). Social media is a phrase being tossed around a lot. It is a website that does not just give you information but interact with you while giving you information. It is a group of internet based application that allows the creation and exchange of users generated content. It is easy to confuse social media with social news because we often refer to members of the news as the media. Adding to it, that social news site is also social media site. Some media website includes:
- Social Bookmarking: interact by tagging website and searching through website book marked by others (Blink list, simple).
- Social News: interact by voting for articles and commenting on them (Digg, propello).
- Social Networking: interact by adding friends, commenting on photo and profiles, sharing groups for discussions (Facebook, 2go, BB chat)
- Social Photo and Video Sharing: interact by sharing photos or videos and commenting on the user submission. (Youtube and Fliki).
- Wikis: interact by adding articles and editing existing articles. (Wikipedia, wikia).
Social media refers to the means of interaction among people in which they create, share, exchange and comment among themselves in different networks. Andreas and Michael (2010) are of the opinion that social media is a group of internet based application that builds on the ideological foundation and allows the creation and exchange of users – generated content. Social media has become one of the major channel of chatting through platforms such as 2go, BB chat, blogger and wiki a. There has been an increase in the mobile social media which has created new opportunity for browsing.
The internet usage effect of social media, in views of Nielsen (2012) is that, students continue to spend more time on the social media than any site. The total time spent on social media across mobile devices increased by 37%, 121 billion minutes in July 2012 compared to 88 billion minutes in July 2011.
Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) classified social media into six different classes as follows:
- Collaborative Project (Wikipedia)
- Blogs and Micro blogs (Twitter)
- Content Communities (Youtube)
- Social Networking Site (Facebook; 2go; BB chat)
- Virtual Game World (World of war craft)
- Virtual Second World (Second life)
Technology includes the blogs, picture sharing, music sharing, crowd sourcing, e-mail, instant messaging and voice over. These services could be integrated via social network aggregation platforms.
Mobile Social Media
When social media is used in combination with mobile devices, it is called mobile social media. Social media is a group of mobile marketing application that allows the creation and exchange of users generated content. Due to the fact that mobile social media runs on mobile devices, it differs from traditional social media as it incorporates new factors such as the current location of the user, time delay between sending and receiving. According to Kaplan (2002), social media can be divided into four types:
- Space-timers (location and time sensitive): exchange of message with relevance for specific location and time (Face book, 2go, BB chat)
- Quick-time (time sensitive): transfer of traditional social media application to mobile services to increase immediacy (posting twitter messages, status update [2go], and updating display picture [dp] [bbm]).
- Space-locators (location sensitive): exchange message with relevance for one specific location which are tagged to certain place (yelp, sype).
- Slow-timers (neither location nor time sensitive): transfer traditional social media application to mobile devices (reading a wikipedia entry).
CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Introduction
In this chapter, we described the research procedure for this study. A research methodology is a research process adopted or employed to systematically and scientifically present the results of a study to the research audience viz. a vis, the study beneficiaries.
Research Design
Research designs are perceived to be an overall strategy adopted by the researcher whereby different components of the study are integrated in a logical manner to effectively address a research problem. In this study, the researcher employed the survey research design. This is due to the nature of the study whereby the opinion and views of people are sampled. According to Singleton & Straits, (2009), Survey research can use quantitative research strategies (e.g., using questionnaires with numerically rated items), qualitative research strategies (e.g., using open-ended questions), or both strategies (i.e. mixed methods). As it is often used to describe and explore human behaviour, surveys are therefore frequently used in social and psychological research.
Population of the Study
According to Udoyen (2019), a study population is a group of elements or individuals, as the case may be, who share similar characteristics. These similar features can include location, gender, age, sex or specific interest. The emphasis on study population is that it constitutes individuals or elements that are homogeneous in description.
This study was carried out to examine the Effects of Facebook and WhatsApp on academic performance of UCC students. Hence, the population of this study comprises of UCC students.
CHAPTER FOUR
RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
Introduction
This chapter presents and discusses the results of the data collected in the field. The chapter comprises of five sections – demographic characteristics of respondents, the reasons for the students’ use of WhatsApp and Facebook, how do students use WhatsApp and Facebook on campus, the positive effects of WhatsApp and Facebook on students’ performance and the negative effects of WhatsApp and Facebook on students’ performance.
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
Summary of Findings
The findings of this research revealed that undergraduates use both Facebook and WhatsApp in the universities studied. it was found that a great number of undergraduates agreed that Facebook and WhatsApp could aid academic purposes. This finding is an indication that the undergraduates should be encouraged in their use of both platforms for academic purposes being that this is an era where distance learning is on the increase. It would be very useful for this current generation of learners who are always interacting with their gadgets. This finding is in consonance with the observation of Obi et al (2020)
Findings on impact of Facebook and WhatsApp in the universities studied revealed that there are more positive impacts to their studies than negative impacts The findings of this study, therefore, concurs with the assertion of Petrović et al. (2012) Finding on the undergraduates’ purpose of using Facebook and WhatsApp revealed that while Facebook is seen more or less as a social platform by majority of the respondents, WhatsApp is mostly accepted as a better platform for academic collaboration platform. This is in consideration of the returned grand mean and the separate means realized from the questionnaire items. This study has been able to find out that undergraduates might be ready as these platforms could be a distracting factor. Academic success is now paramount issues to any student, with the pressure to belong to social networks. The question now is, are undergraduate students really meeting up with the pressure to succeed academically owing their awareness and use of Facebook and WhatsApp? (Ogedebe et al., 2012). These platforms are supposed to make a good platform for students to meet for academic activities probably after school activities, they could also be adopted in the school for collaboration purposes, but aside academic purposes, then, it will be harmful.
Findings on the undergraduates’ frequency of use of Facebook and WhatsApp revealed that undergraduates were always using these platforms on a daily basis as seen in the data collected and analysed. Based on the grand mean value, it was revealed that a large number of the respondents used the two platforms several times a day. This finding is an indication that proper use of these platforms will definitely be beneficial to the students in their academic pursuits. This study supports the sentiment of academic improvement as researched by Blanche, Beard and Britt (2019). The study on Using a Facebook Group as an Educational Tool: Effects on Student Achievement. The study examined the effectiveness of using a Facebook group to increase pre-service teachers’ knowledge of core technology topics. Further, it examined their use of Facebook, their use of a course-related Facebook group, their participation habits in the group, and their perceptions of using Facebook for educational purposes. Findings on the challenges in the use of Facebook and WhatsApp revealed that respondents feel it could be time-consuming, as many of the respondents strongly agreed to it being time- consuming amongst other challenges. The findings were in line with the studies carried out by Pempek et al (2019) and Lenhart and Madden (2017).
Findings on the possible solutions to the challenges identified in the research revealed that most of the respondents stated that efficient data services should be made to ease the slow nature of internet connection in most cases.
Conclusions
This study is a Comparative Study on the Use of Facebook and WhatsApp for academic learning by Undergraduate Students of Baze University, and University of Abuja. The results obtained from the data collected and analyzed in this study indicated that undergraduate students were of the opinion that the use of these platforms could derail academic activities. Thus, they are aware of the impacts of the use of these platforms. The research also revealed that undergraduates mostly use Facebook and WhatsApp for social activities, they also incorporate academic activities to their use, and were using these platforms several times on a daily basis.
The challenges mostly pointed out by undergraduates is that, it is time-consuming and of course, the high cost of data is also a notable challenge, while most of the respondents asked that affordable and effective internet data should be made available for the undergraduate students in universities in Nigeria to aid their academic pursuit.
Recommendations
Based on the findings and conclusions of this study, the following recommendations were made;
1.University management should create workshop platforms to educate the undergraduate student on the existing social media platforms that could aid academic activities.
2.Undergraduate students should be tutored and trained on how to comport themselves to ensure that these platforms do not become a disadvantage as regards to academic activities.
3.Undergraduates in the studied universities should be encouraged to employ the two platforms more for academic activities as such reduce the disadvantages of its use.
4. As the undergraduates are using these platforms daily, it will be beneficial, to continue using it daily but for academic purposes.
Affordable and efficient internet data connection should be made available for the undergraduates to reduce the time spent waiting for a full connection.
References
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