SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCE ON CONCENTRATION AND READING SKILLS OF SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN ENUGU STATE

Abstract

The contemporary Information Technology (IT) age utilizes computer-mediated tools called social media a lot. As social media help people to create, share, or exchange information, career interests, ideas, and pictures/videos in virtual communities and networks, there are associated challenges especially with secondary school students. Thus, the purpose of this study was to ascertain the influence of social media among secondary school students’ concentration and reading skills in Enugu state. Descriptive survey research design was adopted for the study. Two research questions and two hypotheses guided the study. Area of the study was Enugu state of Nigeria. The population for the study comprised all the 56,342 (36,042 female and 20,300 male) students in the secondary schools in Enugu state. The sample for the study comprises 856 students consisting of 526 females and 330 males. Proportionate, stratified random sampling was used to draw 20% of the total number of secondary schools. Instrument for data collection was an Inventory on Social Media Influence on Concentration and Reading skills of Secondary School Students in Enugu State (ISMICRSSE). It was a 14-item questionnaire. The questionnaire was validated by three research experts. The overall reliability coefficient value for the instrument was .78 obtained through Cronbach’s Alpha Method. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while z-test statistic was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 significant level. Based on the findings of the study, it was recommended that curriculum planers should include benefits of proper use of social media and the ills of their wrong use in all teacher-training programmes in Nigeria.