Abstract

The purpose of this research study is to examine the influence of Facebook and the Academic Performance Of students at the University of Buea. Four research questions and four Research hypotheses guided the study. To achieve this, the descriptive survey research design was adopted.

The study focused on the University of Buea hence, the population consists of all the 24,661 full-time undergraduate students. The simple random sampling technique was used to select a sample of 378 students.

A four-point Likert Type Rating Scale Questionnaire type, titled: Social Media and Academic Performance of Students Questionnaire (FAAPOS) was used to collect data from the participants.

The descriptive statistics of frequency counts and percentage were used to analyze the demographic data while inferential statistics of Chi-square(x2) was used in testing the research hypotheses.

Research findings showed that a great number of students in the University of Buea are addicted to Facebook. To this end, the researcher recommended that Facebook should be used for educational purposes as well; Social Networking Sites should be expanded and new pages should be created to enhance academic activities and avoid setbacks in the students’ academic performance, and Students should be monitored by teachers and parents on how they use these sites This is to create a balance between Facebook and academic activities of students to avoid setbacks in the academic performance of the students.

CHAPTER ONE

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study

Historical background

The roots of social media stretch far deeper than you might ever imagine. Although it seems like a new trend, sites like Facebook, are the natural outcome of many centuries of social media development.

Before this, many people used written correspondence delivered by hand from one person to another, which is also known as letter writing. two important discoveries happened in the last decades of the 1800s. which are the radio in 1891 and the telephone in 1890.

Both technologies are still in use today though the modern versions are much more sophisticated than their predecessors. The telephone lines and radio signals enabled people to communicate across great distances.

In the 20th century, technology began to change rapidly. the first supercomputer was created and shortly after, scientists and engineers began to develop ways to create networks between those computers, and this later led to the birth of the internet; later on, emails were also created.

The first recognizable social media site that was developed was SIX DEGREES which was created in 1997. It enabled users to upload a profile and make friends with other users. In 1999, the first blogging sites became popular. Creating a social media sensation that is still popular today.

After that, other social media sites began to explode in popularity. Which are; Myspace, Linkedln, YouTube, Flicker, and also Facebook and Twitter. Today, the is a tremendous variety of social networking sites, and many of them can be linked to allow cross-posting which creates an environment where users can reach the maximum number of people without sacrificing the intimacy of person-to-person communication.

Among all the sites mentioned above in the background of social media, Facebook is the most used site. Facebook is a social networking website that was launched in 2004 by Facebook Inc. it was initially developed by students at Harvard University was Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook had one billion active users around the world in 2012.

This number raised to 1.59 monthly active users(statista2016). Facebook is the leader of social networking websites which has more users compared to other social websites (AKBIYIK,2013). Facebook has usability to use and users have lots of features to use in order to share photos, videos. Users also can add new friends, comments, and messaging each other (Servia-Rodriguez el al.2013).

In 2012, Facebook App Center, an online mobile store, was rolled out. The store initially had 500 Facebook apps which were mostly games, on April 24, 2014, Facebook and Storyful announced a new feature called FB Newswire.

In addition to the Android and iOS mobile app, Facebook develops another Android app called Facebook Lite which uses fewer data. Another project from Facebook is called Facebook Zero, which allows users to use a mobile text-only version of Facebook for free, without paying for mobile data when using some mobile network operators.

In May 2018, the company announced its own dating service, called Facebook Dating.

Friendship; could be trace as far as human existence is a concerned as a relationship of mutual affection between people.

It is a stronger form of interpersonal bond than an association and has been studied in academic fields such as communication, sociology, social psychology, anthropology, and philosophy.

Various academic theories of friendship have been proposed, including social change theory, equity theory, relational dialectics, and attachment style (Petrona Viera 1895-1960).

Also, friendship isn’t just something we humans do anyone who has seen kittens and puppies cuddling or chimpanzees enjoying a good nit-picking session can attest that friendship occurs across different species.

According to the Evolutionary Origins of Friendship, when animals form friendships, “male allies have superior competitive ability and improved reproductive success; females with the strongest, most enduring friendships experience less stress, higher infant survival, and live longer.

But while the paleo version of friendships, back when we were cavemen, may have been largely linked to survival, the core benefits of friendship have not changed much.  We used to need friends for survival,” says the popular philosopher Alain de Botton talking to HuffPost UK Lifestyle, “now we have the police and the state for survival.

So what are friends for? They are there to support us in our commitments, to guide us gently away from risks, and to help us to develop our thoughts and insights. The job has turned from physical to psychological. “It can be easy, sometimes, to lose the idea of what friendship is or should be about.

But essentially, says Karin Sieger, psychotherapist, and HuffPost UK blogger, true friendships “are based on unconditional concern for the other. We do things for the other out of friendship, not in order to gain anything.

Friendships can provide grounding, safety, comfort, the experience of trust and respect, of being understood and valued.” But whether people hold onto their old friends or grow apart seems to come down to dedication and communication.

In Ledbetter’s longitudinal study of best friends, the number of months that friends reported being close in 1983 predicted whether they were still close in 2002, suggesting that the more you’ve invested in a friendship already, the more likely you are to keep it going. Other research has found that people need to feel like they are getting as much out of the friendship as they are putting in and that that equity can predict a friendship’s continued success.

Hanging out with a set of lifelong best friends can be annoying because the years of inside jokes and references often make their communication unintelligible to outsiders. But this sort of shared language is part of what makes friendships last. In the longitudinal study, the researchers were also able to predict friends’ future closeness by how well they performed on a word-guessing game in 1983.

(The game was similar to Taboo, in that one partner gave clues about a word without actually saying it, while the other guessed.)“Such communication skill and mutual understanding may help friends successfully transition through life changes that threaten friendship stability,” the study reads. Friends don’t necessarily need to communicate often, or intricately, just similarly.

Of course, people can communicate with friends in more ways than ever, and media multiplexity theory suggests that the more platforms through which friends communicate—texting and emailing, sending each other funny Snapchats and links on Facebook, and seeing each other in person—the stronger their friendship is. “If we only have the Facebook tie, that’s probably a friendship that’s in greater jeopardy of not surviving into the future,” Ledbetter says.

Though you would think we would all know better by now than to draw a hard line between online relationships and “real” relationships, Langan says her students still use “real” to mean “in-person.”

There are four main levels of maintaining a relationship, and digital communication works better for some than for others. The first is just keeping a relationship alive at all, just to keep it in existence. Saying “Happy birthday” on Facebook, like a friend’s tweet—these are the life-support machines of friendship.

Online classes; could be trace as far as human existence is concerned as a course conducted over the internet and it has been in use since the  1950s. However, one of the first instances of online learning in the world can be traced back to 1960, at the University of Illinois, USA.

Though the internet wasn’t invented back then, students began learning from computer terminals that were interlinked to form a network. But the ever-first completed online course was offered in 1984 at Toronto University and it had developed over the years.

In 1924, the first testing machine was invented. This device allowed students to test themselves. Then, in 1954, BF Skinner, a Harvard Professor, invented the “teaching machine”, which enabled schools to administer programmed instruction to their students.

It wasn’t until 1960 however that the first computer-based training program was introduced to the world. This computer-based training program (or CBT program) was known as PLATO-Programmed Logic for Automated Teaching Operations.

It was originally designed for students attending the University of Illinois but ended up being used in schools throughout the area. In Britain, the Open University was keen to take advantage of e-learning.

Their system of education has always been primarily focused on learning at a distance. In the past, course materials were delivered by post, and correspondence with tutors was via mail. With the internet, the Open University began to offer a wider range of interactive educational experiences as well as faster correspondence with students via email, etc.

With the introduction of the computer and internet in the late 20th century, e-learning tools and delivery methods expanded. The first MAC in the 1980′s enabled individuals to have computers in their homes, making it easier for them to learn about particular subjects and develop certain skill sets. Then, in the following decade, virtual learning environments began to truly thrive, with people gaining access to a wealth of online information and e-learning opportunities.

By the early 90s, several schools had been set up that delivered courses online only, making the most of the internet and bringing education to people who wouldn’t previously have been able to attend a college due to geographical or time constraints.

Technological advancements also helped educational establishments reduce the costs of distance learning, a saving that would also be passed on to the students – helping bring education to a wider audience.

In the 2000′s, businesses began using e-learning to train their employees. New and experienced workers alike now had the opportunity to improve upon their industry knowledge base and expand their skill sets.

At home, individuals were granted access to programs that offered them the ability to earn online degrees and enrich their lives through expanded knowledge. Until the breakout of the COVID-19 pandemic that has made online classes not to be limited only to university and college students, but also to primary school pupils (Adams’s university).

Information: it’s known as the summarization of data. The Latin roots and Greek origins of the word “information” are present by Capurro  & Hjorland (2003). References on “formation or molding of the mind or character, training, instruction, and teaching, date from the 14th century in both English (according to Oxford English Dictionary) and other European languages.

In the transition from Middle Ages to Modernity, the use of the concept of information reflected a fundamental turn in epistemological basis, from “giving a (substantial) form to matter” to “communicating something to someone”. (Peters 1988, pp. 12–13).

A direct relationship that existed between social media usage and the academic performance of students in universities is the darker side within technological evolution which resulted in dilemmas such as the setbacks of real values of life especially among students who form the majority of users interacting through the use of social networking sites.

Online social networking sites focus on building and reflecting social associations among people who share interests and/or activities. With so many social networking sites displayed on the internet, students are tempted to abandon their homework and reading times in preference for chatting online with friends.

Students became addicted to the online rave of the internet, with Facebook and other sites. Students also became victims of cyberbullying and as a result, students’ performance was affected.

Today, most youths and students possess Facebook accounts. The reason most of them perform badly in school might not be farfetched, though some of them turn to blame the poor qualities of teachers and forget that the media has become part of their lives and their academic works.

When education began in the world in the early 16th century, children went to school without knowing how the internet looked like. But today most students use the internet and search for relevant and irrelevant information online forgetting that teachers use to be good sources of relevant information.

Olubiyi (2012) noted that these days students are so engrossed with social media that they are almost 24hours online. Even in the classrooms and lecture theatres, it has been observed that some students are always busy pinging, 2going or Facebooking, while lectures are on.

Times that ought to be channeled towards learning, academic research, and innovating have been crushed by the passion for meeting new friends online, and most times busy discussing trivial issues. Hence most students’ academics suffer setbacks as a result of distraction from social media.

Also, social media has turned to affect student’s use of English and grammar(Obi, Bulus, Adamu and Sala’at 2012), observed that students now use short forms of writing words in their chat rooms and as a result, they forget and use it in the classrooms. They use things like 4 in place of for, U in place of you, D in place of the, and so on. All this could affect their class assessment.

Statement of the problem

Facebook has always been one of the best among all the social media sites that have existed so far. It has helped create friendly relationships, it’s also a good means to acquire information and it also encourage learning through group studies. But Facebook has affected students’ life and studies at the University of Buea.

Some students are suffering from Facebook because they have become addicted to it. Facebook also has an impact on student’s behavior and performance. Facebook does not let students focus on their studies. It also causes students to pass wrong information and harmful content online. It is for this reason that, the researcher seeks to find the “effect of Facebook on the academic performance of students in the university of Buea”

Justification of the study

This research is carried out mainly to bring out the impact that Facebook has had on student’s performance over the years.

Research Objectives

General objective

To determine the effect of Facebook on students’ academic performance at the University of Buea.

Specific objectives

1. Facebook friendships and student’s academic performance in the University of Buea.
2. Online classes and student’s academic performance in the University of Buea.
3. Facebook information and student’s academic performance in the University of Buea.