CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Since the popularization of the internet in the 1990s and the emergence of social networking sites in 1994 and beyond, there is abundant evidence that millions of people across the world use social media on a regular basis for various reasons (Daluba & Maxwell, 2013). With the nature of the cyber world around us today and how students are immersed in it, there is growing concern on how it aects them. Though social media use cuts across all age groups, studies have however shown that it is predominant among young persons (Onuoha & Saheed, 2011) and students of institutions of higher education (Dahlstrom, de Boor, Grunwald, & Vockley, 2011). The adoption and growing interest of social networking sites (SNS) by secondary school students, such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter and LinkedIn, is unprecedented and raises questions about their impact on academic performance with the resultant social interactions taking place via these platforms have not spared educational institutions. In fact, Rosen (2011) found that while those born between 1965-1979 (‘Generation X’), spend approximately 13 hours per day on social media, those born between 1990-1999 (‘I Generation’) however spend not less than 20 hours per day on social media.

These young people use social media for interaction, socialization and entertainment according to Kalra and Manani (2013). The social networking sites represents relationships and flows between people, groups, organizations, animals, computers or other information and knowledge processing entities. A social networking site is a website that provides a virtual community for people of similar interests on a particular subject or just to ‘hang out’ together. “They are web-based services that allow individuals to construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, view and traverse their lists of connections and those made by others within the system” (Boyd & Ellison, 2008). At the basic level, social networking sites allow users to set up online profiles or personal homepages, and develop an online social network. In addition, users can design the appearance of their page; add content such as photos, video clips and music files. Some network types are for general purpose while others connect people in the same professional world so that one can interact with those in the same field or to make connections in companies that are similar to ones work of life.

Some of the most popular social networks are: Facebook, Myspace, Classmate, Google+ Linkedin, Twitter, Netlog, Hi5, WhatsApp, Badoo, etc. It is not doubtful that some students in secondary schools repeat a class or proceed to the next level of studies without passing a particular subject perfectly. The technological advancement and societal values such as social networking sites on the internet is one of the factors that are aecting the academic performance of students in secondary schools. Boyd, (2010), viewed Internet as a very important element of life which cannot be ignored. Internet is used for educational purpose by a large community but unfortunately we have a larger community including majority of youths and teenagers who use Internet for only social networking. The Federal Government of Nigeria has through its National Policy on Education (2010), spelt out how education can be utilized to bringing about the necessary transformation in the country. Admittedly, the secondary school which is an important level of the educational system is expected to produce students who should be able to manage very high and sensitive positions so that the laudable objectives can be realized. To buttress this point, as opined by Esu (2010) there is a near national outcry on the poor quality of education in Nigeria. To support these points, Oyensusi (2008) indicated that most students in this generation are frivolous in their approach to learning. Social networking sites have caused many problems like making students to lost interests in their studies as they spent most of the times on these social networking sites. It was concluded by Banquil & Chua, (2009) that social networking sites do aect ones academic performance adversely.

The social networking sites directly cause the gradual drop in the grades of students thereby adversely affecting a students’ academic performance if such a student invests his time in social networking sites instead of in his studies. Paul, et al, (2012), in their research on effects of online social networking on students’’ academic performance discovered that there is statistically significant negative relationship between time spent by students on social network site and their academic performance. The time spent on social network sites was found to be heavily influenced by the attention span of the students. Specifically, they disclosed that the higher the attention span, the lower the time spent on online social networks. Furthermore, attention span was found to be highly correlated with characteristics that predict or influence students’ behavior, such as their perceptions about society’s view of social networking, their likes and dislikes of online social networks, ease of use of Online social networks, etc. Given the foregoing therefore, this study seeks to examine the effect of social networking sites on the academic attitude of secondary school students in Nigeria.