INFLUENCE OF SOCIAL MEDIA ADDICTION ON STUDENTS’ ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT IN COLLEGES OF EDUCATION, GOMBE STATE

Abstract

The study investigated the influence of social media addiction on students’ academic achievement in Colleges of Education, Gombe State. The study was guided by four research questions and two hypotheses. The population of the study comprised of 7,166 NCE II students of Colleges of Education in Gombe State from which 381students were sampled using the Krejcie and Morgan (1970) sampling technique to participate in the study. A validated instrument tagged: Questionnaire for Social Media Addiction (QSMA) was used to collect data for the study. Analysis was done using mean, standard deviation and percentages while hypotheses were tested using the Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC) and the t-test statistics at 0.05 level of significance. The study revealed that: majority of the students’ grade are in the ‘Merit’ division, and they are given to high social media usage. Moreover, the influence of social media on students’ academics is overwhelming leading to average achievement. The testing of hypotheses revealed that there is a significant relationship between students’ addictiveness to social network and academic achievement. In addition, there was no significant difference between social media usage and gender. Based on the findings, it is recommended that students should be encouraged to reduce the time they spent on social media so as to have adequate time to rest and engage in their studies. Also, students should be encouraged to use the social media positively for academic purposes through lectures by College Management.