The impact of social media usage on the academic performance of students at MTSIFA in Makerere University

Abstract

The study entirely investigated the impact of social media usage on the academic performance of students at MTSIFA in Makerere University. Other purposes were to investigate how students at MTSIFA use social media, to assess the impact of social media usage on the academic performance of students at MTSIFA and to determine the level of students exposure to social media at MTSIFA? A total sample size of 78 students were randomly selected and all were fulltime undergraduate students. The percentage of male students was 42.3% and 57.7% for female students. The study used a descriptive research design with the help of the quantitative research approach. 78 similar questionnaires were used for data collection, the questionnaire had 3 sections namely general information (age, sex, year of study in section A, Likert scale of response choices of agree (A), strongly agree (SA), disagree (D), strongly disagree (SD) in section B, Section C had closed end questions whereby respondents had to tick or circle only one desired choice on each question. The responses were analyzed using descriptive statistics of frequencies and percentage. Results indicated that social media usage is so important to students at MTSIFA. They use it for various purposes related to academics such as online submission of course works, interaction with lectures and self learning using tutorials. However social media also have negative effects on students academic life like distraction from reading books to watching videos online such as movies, songs and sports. So there should be a balance on the use of social media by students, more time should be spent on social media for academic purposes to boast performance in exams.