Influence of Social Media Use on Academic Performance of Secondary School Students

Abstract

Background: Globalization and the spread of social media in recent years have affected people in various fields and levels. Their most significant impact was on the younger generation, especially school students, which affected their academic performance in educational institutions. This study aims to determine the influence of social media use on students' academic performance.

Method: A descriptive study is conducted from December 2022 to May 2023. A purposive "non-probability" sample of (364) students is selected. An adopted questionnaire has been selected for the study, which consists of three parts. The first part is the student’s socio-demographic characteristics, “Social Media Engagement Scale for Adolescents SMES-A,” and the third is the student’s grade point average (GPA).

Results: This study shows that most students (68.1%) have moderate social media use, and most students (51.4%) have low academic performance. This study shows that the social media platforms mainly used are Instagram (67.6%), Telegram (61.3%), and YouTube (59.3%), which are used mainly for socialization, information, and academic purposes and most Students (34.1%) report that they spend more than 4 hours per day using social media platforms and sites. Also, this study found no significant influence of social media use on the academic performance of secondary students.

Conclusions: The study concludes that Although students' use of social media was high and their academic performance was low, this use did not directly affect their academic performance. The result of this study suggests that the possible impact of social media use on student academic performance is related to how much or how to manage time a student spends on social media platforms.

Recommendations: The researcher recommended that educational institutions emphasize the risks and challenges that current and future generations face due to excessive use of social media and the advantages and disadvantages of such use.