Relationship Between Social Media Usage and Cognitive Development among Senior Secondary School Students in Rivers State

Abstract

This study examined study social media usage and cognitive development among senior secondary schools in Rivers State. Three research questions and three hypotheses guided the study. The population comprised all senior secondary school students in Rivers State. The study adopted a correlational research design.  The population was 82,303 senior secondary school students. The sample comprised 450 students selected through Taro Yamane and stratified random sampling technique. The instrument for data collection was  a self-structured questionnaire titled “Social Media Usage and Student’ Cognitive Development Questionnaire”. The instrument was validated by three experts in Educational Psychology, Guidance and Counselling, and Measurement and Evaluation. The reliability of the instrument was determined using test re-test method. Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC) was used to answer and test all the hypotheses.  The study revealed that the social media usage of Whatsapp, Twitter and tiktok all showed high positive significant relationship with cognitive development among public senior secondary school students. Facebook had a moderate positive significant relationship with cognitive development. Tiktok had low positive significant relationship with cognitive with cognitive development of students in senior secondary schools in Rivers State. Based on the study recommended that school administrators and parents should effectively monitor students on the use of Facebook social usage to discourage spending too much of time on the social network while neglecting their academics.