A Survey on Facebook and Academic Performance in Nigeria Universities

Abstract

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.