A survey on Facebook and Academic Performance in Nigeria Universities

This paper test students’ facebook usage and their academic performance. The paper was also intended to find how pervasive the use of facebook by University students plays a role in their academic success. A 20 question questionnaire was designed and sent out to approximately 150 students of different Universities in Nigeria. To capture the main types of University, a Federal University, a State University and a Private University cut across the nation were chosen. Of the questionnaire sent out, 81% of them were within the age of 18 to 21. The Independent variables measured how actively students used facebook, including how much time they spend on facebook, how often they update their status, post on friends’ walls, comment on others’ pages, the level of their privacy settings, and how many friends and photo albums they have. In order to accurately measure students’ academic achievement, we had student’s self‐report their in‐class participation, attendance, as well as grade point average. Six pre‐determined hypotheses were tested. First, the more time a student spends on facebook, the lower grade point average the student has. Secondly, the higher a student’s privacy settings are on facebook, the higher that student’s grade point average is. Thirdly, the more a student updates his or her facebook status, the less likely they are to have good class attendance. Fourthly, the more time a student spends on facebook, the less likely they are to participate in class. Fifthly, the more friends a student has on facebook, the more time he spends on facebook. Lastly, that the more posts a student puts on facebook, the less likely they are to participate in class. Data collected were analyzed and tested by using correlation tests through SPSS, a data analysis program. All the hypotheses were proven wrong. Introduction Social media networking has taken over the world. Facebook is at the forefront of the social media craze, with over 500 million active users on its website every month. University students are one of the primary demographics using facebook, with features such as photos, wall posts, and status updates becoming seemingly irresistible to those who want to connect with their friends. The University culture loves facebook, embraces it and has turned the site into a lifestyle, rather than just a hobby or a fun pastime. Academic success is paramount issues to any student, with the pressure to belong to social networks. Are they really meeting up with the pressure to succeed academically? In this paper, an attempt will be made to take a look at these two major forces in a university student‟s life in Nigeria and see if we could find a relationship between the two. Literature Review In 2009 a draft manuscript suggested that facebook use might be related to lower academic achievement in college and graduate school (Karpinski, 2009). The report quickly became a media sensation and was picked up by hundreds of news outlets in a matter of days. However, the results were based on correlational data in a draft manuscript that had not been published, or even considered for publication. Researchers examining facebook use from a media effects tradition have focused either on the social implications of the medium or on the potential risks that users of social networking sites may experience. For instance, a variety of studies have noted that the use of facebook is positively related to social capital (Boyd and Ellison, 2007; Valenzuela, et al., 2008). On the other hand, some research suggests that facebook users underestimate the potential privacy risks of sharing information on the site (Acquisiti and Gross, 2006; Dwyer, et al., 2007). As with claims of dangers from older media, a recent study (and corresponding press release) indicating that facebook use and collegiate grade point averages (GPA) were negatively correlated generated a great deal of media hype (Karpinski, 2009). As Karpinski (2009) herself notes, she is not the first to examine the relationship between facebook use and grade point averages. She references two studies that lead to the hypothesis that academic performance and use of the site might be negatively correlated. First, she cites a Master‟s thesis by Boogart (2006). While the thesis offers some suggestive evidence, Boogart only examined the Dr P.M. Ogedebe, J.A.Emmanuel, Y.Musa / International Journal of Engineering Research and Applications (IJERA) ISSN: 2248-9622 www.ijera.com Vol. 2, Issue 4, July-August 2012, pp.788-797 789 | P a g e relationship between time spent on facebook and GPA, and similarly failed to utilize control variables despite a diverse collection of students from four universities. The second study by Karpinski cited by Kubey, Lavin, and Barrows (2001) does not mention social networking sites at all. She claims the suggestion in the draft FG paper that social networking sites represent a type of exclusively recreational use actually runs counter to other literature in the field. It should be noted that an additional paper by Kolek and Saunders (2008) found that there was no correlation between facebook use and GPA in a representative sample of students from a public Northeast research university. The draft FG manuscript cited the Kolek and Saunders piece, but did not note its findings regarding the lack of a relationship between facebook use and Grades. Defining social Networks Facebook, MySpace, Orkut, Cyworld, Bebo and other social network sites are, perhaps, the best examples of O‟Reilly‟s (2005) Web 2.0 environment, where audiences have become coauthors on interactive websites.5 In a similar fashion as blogs, SNS allow individuals to present themselves to other users using a variety of formats, including text and video. Just like chat services. Social-networking sites and facebook_Socializing via the Internet has become an increasingly important part of young adult life (Gemmill & Peterson, 2006). Relative to the general population, adolescents and young adults are the heaviest computer and Internet users, primarily using it for completing school assignments (46%), e-mail and/or instant messaging (36%), and playing computer games (38%; DeBell & Chapman, 2006). Socialnetworking sites (hereafter SNS) are the latest online communication tool that allows users to create a public or private profile to interact with people in their networks (Boyd & Ellison, 2008). SNS incorporate a list of other users with whom individuals share a connection. But unlike any other web service, SNS allow individuals to make visible their list of connections to others and to traverse their social networks (boyd & Ellison, 2007). Hence, more than virtual Lessons from facebook 5 communities born online, SNS are usually online communities created and maintained to reflect offline relationships. SNS can be defined as web-based services that allow individuals to construct a public or semipublic profile within a bounded system, articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system (Boyd & Ellison, 2008, p. 211). One such website is facebook_, which was created by Mark Zuckerberg to help residential college and university students identify students in other residence halls. It is described as „„. . .an online directory that connects people through social networks at colleges and universities” (Zuckerberg, 2005, p. 1). Websites such as MySpace_ and the more popular FB have millions of registered users, with FB becoming the overwhelmingly more popular SNS (comScore, 2009; Gonzalez, 2009, checkfacebook.com). An Overview of Facebook Facebook was created in February 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes as a site for Harvard students only. Shortly after, it expanded to any college student with a .edu e-mail account. Between Fall 2005 and Fall 2006, facebook expanded to high school networks, first, work networks, later, and, eventually, to Internet users in general. According to comScore Inc.‟s rankings of top websites, in 2008 facebook.com was ranked as the Lessons from Facebook 6 16th most visited website on the Internet in the U.S. (comScore, 2008a), with 34 million unique visitors by January 2008, and as the 13th most popular website worldwide (comScore, 2008b), with 98 million unique visitors by December 2007. As of March 2008, Facebook reported having 67 million active users (those who have returned to the site in the last 30 days), with more than half of them returning daily and spending an average of 20 minutes per day on the site (Facebook, 2008). Like most social network sites, facebook provides a formatted web page into which each user can enter personal information, including gender, birthday, hometown, political and religious views, e-mail and physical addresses, relationship status, activities, interests, favorite music and movies, educational background and a main personal picture. After completing their profile, users are prompted to identify others with whom they have a relationship, either by searching for registered users of facebook or by requesting their contacts to join facebook (usually by e-mail). Once someone is accepted as a “friend,” not only the two users‟ personal profile but also their entire social networks are disclosed to each other. This allows each user to traverse networks by clicking through “friends‟” profiles, so that one‟s social network snowballs rapidly across people and institutions (Walther et al., 2008). This capability is the backbone of facebook and other SNS and what attracts millions of users around the globe. Facebook profiles also include two types of messaging services. A private system, which is very similar to a webmail service, and a public system called “The Wall,” where “friends” leave comments to the owner of the profile that can be viewed by other users. Usually, “The Wall” contains short messages that reflect sentiments, common act