INFLUENCE OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT OF SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL, TWO (SS 2) STUDENTS INMAKURDI LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA, BENUE STATE,
NIGERIA

The downward movement of academic output in Nigeria, especially in the past few decades, has raised issues of concern for every academically minded Nigerian. This deterioration has been attributed to many factors suspiciously. Social media, one of the latest breakthroughs in technology, have also been suspected recently by many to be responsible for low academic performance in the secondary schools. This research was carried out to examine the influence of social media on academic achievement of secondary school students. The researcher chose the Senior Secondary School, Two (SS 2) students in Makurdi Local Government Area of Benue State, Nigeria as the population for this study. A sample of 97 students from a total of 966 SS 2 students in the study area was used for the study. The researcher explored different control variables in relation to social media use as a guide to examining its impact on students. The study examined students exposure to social media, the people they relate with on social media, activities students engage in on social media, how long they stay online and the type of social media sites students patronize. The Ex post facto was adopted as the research design for this study. To obtain the relevant data, the structured questionnaire and achievement test were administered to the respondents. The research questions were answered by frequency count and percentages from the data collected with the questionnaire while the research hypothesis was tested using the student t-test via the SPSS software. Research findings showed that students are exposed to social media; that they relate more among themselves on social media; that they spend only a maximum of thirty minutes when they visit social media and that they majorly visit social media to keep company with their friends. The overall analysis (from hypothesis testing) revealed that social media does not affect students academic performance. Thus teachers were recommended to get involved with students on social media in order to help them derive the best from these sites. Further studies on other variables, apart from social media, were suggested to investigate academic decline since this research proved otherwise.