Influence of Social Media Usage on Science Students’ Academic Achievement and Behaviour in Two School-Types in Nigeria

Abstract

Students’ achievements and behavior have continued to dwindle over the years and are getting worse in Nigeria with advancements in technology. Both Public and Private school students who have access to Android phones for social networking are spending less time studying after school. This paper was carried out to find out how the time spent on social media can influence the basic science achievement and behavior of secondary school students from two school types. The study sample consisted of 180 junior secondary schools three students of Delta State public and private schools who had access to an Android phone for social media activities after school. Four research hypotheses guided this study. The research instruments used were the social media time questionnaire (SMTQ) with a reliability coefficient of 0.66 and the 2020/2021 academic session results of the students. Access to their results made it possible to compare their basic science and behavioral achievements. The data contained no significant outliers (p=0.054 Kolmogorov-Smirnov- normality test). Data analysis was done using descriptive, t-test, and 2-way ANOVA statistics. Results showed differences in Basic science achievement in favor of private schools and differences in behavior assessment in favor of public schools but the differences were not significant (p= 0.242; p= 0.656). No significant interactions were found between social media usage time and school type on students’ behavior [p=0.470] and basic science achievement [p= 0.549]. Major recommendations are the emphasis on a reduction in social media usage times irrespective of the school type and an increase in study times.