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.
