THE EFFECT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON THE ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OF N.C.E STUDENTS OF FEDERAL COLLEGE OF EDUCATION PANKSHIN, PLATEAU STATE.

ABSTRACT
Overall goal of the study was to investigate the effect of social media on the academic performance of the N.C.E students of the federal college of education Pankshin, The population of the study is 16.923 and the respondents sampled from the population of the study is 150. The mean score method was used for data analysis and the chi-square test of independence method was used to test the hypothesis, the study found that the use of social media has positively affected students’ academic performance by improving their ability for critical thinking, writing and reading skills, enhance social interaction among staff and students, and also has negatively distorted their standard of spelling and grammars, the researcher recommend that social media sites should be used by students as for knowledge creation and dissemination as well as for the building of healthy social relationship.
Key Words: Social media, Academics, Performance and Students.

CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Alfred et al (2006) says, communication is a basic human need, and for that reason, man has always found a means of meeting this need either through inter personal or mass communication.
Unlike in the past, the people of the world are today living in a global village because of various breakthroughs in information technology. According to a Canadian professor of English Marshall McLuhan, the world is now global villages were the whole world is now compressed into a single electronic chat room.
Katz, (2009) opines that information that usually takes many days or weeks to disseminate now takes seconds or minutes. It’s now possible for people to make interpersonal communication with others to get desired information as quickly as possible from others areas or from other countries with the use of social media without leaving their immediate environment.

The growth of technology towards the end of the 20th century propelled by emergence of the internet, satellite e.t.c. led to what is social media. While social media on other hand is a term in this present world, it encompasses the emergency of digital, computerizes or network interactive information channel.
Also, social media is a form of electronic communication which facilitates interaction based on certain interests and characteristics. Social media are media for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable publishing technique .social media use web based to transform and broadcast media monologues into social dialogue and one of such are Facebook, Twitter, eskimi, and 2go social networking.
Therefore, Facebook started as a local social network made for the students of Harvard. It was developed by a sophomore, mark zuckerberg. Facebook was actually made by hacking Harvard data based containing identification images of students. The initial idea was actually to compare the faces of animals for entertainment purposes. However, due to the potentially damaging contents of the site, the creators decided to put it down before it caught attention of school authorities’
The application was shut down, but the idea of creating an online community of students came into existence. The platform was then improved and source than the expected, Facebook was released in campuses other than Harvard. Thereafter, high schools were already starting to get attracted to the idea of having online communities, thus opening the web site to the younger population. In 2006, facebook.com ultimately offered the opportunity to the rest of the world.
As 2007 approached, the registrant reacted an overwhelming digit roughly a million dozen. Facebook has grown to become the biggest and most popular social networking site today with the population of above 500 million active users (Facebook statistics, 2012).
Also, 2g0, formally 2go travel, is a ferry company which is based in manila Philippines and part of 2go group, a private company own by the Chinese government through the china Asian investment cooperation fund. It is the largest ferry company in Philippines with its main hub located in Eva Macapagal super terminal in pie 15 in the manila south harbor. It has also got its flaws that are currently causing more harm than good among the students today. In cognizance of the rate at which our students at tertiary institution are hooking up to social media, there is the need to educate them on its advantage and disadvantage in their academic performance accordantly.
1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEMs
Since the advent of social media sites in 1990s,it is assumed that the academic performance of students is facing a lot of neglect and challenge; there is a deviation, distraction and divided alternation between social networking activities and their academic. It is observed that students devote more attention to social media than they do to their studies. The negative effects of these social networkers sites out weight the positivity’s. The sites have caused some potentialharm to the society. Cyber bullying child pornography and addictions. The students become victim of social network more than anyone else. This because of the reason that when they are studying or searching out their course material on line, they get to these sites to kill the boredom in their study time, Thus the problem of the study investigate the effect of social media on the academic performance of NCE students of federal college of education pankshin.
1.3 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
i. To examine the effect of social media sites on the academic performance of NCE students of federal college of education Pankshin
ii. To find out whether social media has affected the study time of N.C.E students of federal college of education Pankshin.
iii. To find out whether social media sites can be used to enhance students’ academic performance
1.2 RESEARCH QUESTION
The research work shall be strictly guided by the following questions
i. What are the possible effects of social media sites on the academic performance of NCE students of the federal collage of education Pankshin?
ii. What effect has social media on the study time of NCE students offederal college of education Pankshin?
iii. Can social media be used for the improvement of students’ academic performance?
1.3 RESEARCH HYPOTHESIS
From the research question, the following hypotheses have been formulated to ascertain the effect of social media among N.C.E students of federal college of education Pankshin.
HO1; the use of social media has no significants effect on the academic performance of NCE students of federal college of educationPankshin.
HO2; the use of social media has no effect on the study time of NCE students of federal college of education Pankshin.

1.6 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
The study has practical as well as theoretical significance.Practically, the study will enable policy makers and government to make policies that will minimize students’ indulgence and addiction to social media.
Theoretically, it will contribute to existing knowledge on the social and academic performance of students. The study will help the researchers with more information on the effect of social media on students’ academic performance. It will provide current materials for students and other researchers undertaking similar research.
1.4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY
This work will center on the effects of social media sites on the academic performance of students the federal college of education Pankshin. The objectives of this work (projects, for easy analysis or date, this will reduce cost and avoid complicity that may arise as a result of having a very large population in the process at a wider range in order to make the work nationally accepted and beneficial by collecting various of youths/students on the academic performance of students the construct usage of the social media sites.
1.5 DELIMITATION OF THE STUDY
The work will be limited to students of federal college of education pankshin in essence it involve the N.C.E student’s to test the validity of the research question and drawn hypothesis due to constraints of time and energy/money, it is difficult to carry out the research extensively. It led to the limiting of the scope. Cognizance was also taken to the fact that we academic calendar was too short and academic work load was enormous, as a result of this.
1.6 OPERATIONAL DEFINATION OF TERMS
Social media: a group of internet based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundation of web 2.0 and that allow the creation and exchange of user generated content (Kaplan and Heinlein 2010)
Social skills: any skills facilitating interaction and communication with others; social rules and regulation are created; communications are charged in verbal and non-verbal ways through a process called socialization.
Blogs: A blogs (a contraction of terms web blogs) is a type of webside usually maintain by an individual with regular entries of comentries, descriptions or event or other materials such as graphics or videos entries are commonly displayed in reversed chronology order.
Vlogs; Video blogging sometime shortened to vlogging or viddloging is a form of blogging for which the medium is video, and it’s a form of internet television, entries often combine embedded video link with supporting text image and other metadata
Facebook; Instant massaging (im) is a form of areal time direct shared clients, the text is conveyed via device connected over a network such as internet
What Sapp; is an instant messaging application for smart phone that operates under a subscription business mode. The proprietary cross platform application uses the internet to send.
2go; This one of the social media service site converted over a network and micro-bloging service that enable users to send and read text based message or up-to 140 characters known as tweet
Academics; It is the teaching of values, ethics and the general socialization or the development of individual in terms of instilling social skills, etc; universities and colleges are called academic institution, which is the development of mind and skills.
Performance; It is the act of performing a role and style of performing how well a person is taking a tasks or functions.