Effect of Social Media Overuse on Students’ Attention and Participation during Lectures in Selected Higher Institutions in South West Nigeria

Abstract

The rising penetration of social media into students’ lives heightens the necessity of investigating its effect on academic engagements of students for the purpose of fostering effective learning. This study investigated how the frequency of social media use during lectures, preference for multiple platforms, and after school-hour use of social media influenced attendance and participation, drawing from a sample of 335 students from one university from each of the six states in the region. Statistics used in Analysing data were descriptive, correlation, and regression analyses. Research indicates that the high frequencies of use of social media during lectures (coefficient = -0.348, p < 0.001), multitasking on different platforms (coefficient = -0.233, p < 0.001), and time spent on various activities with social media beyond lectures (coefficient = -0.298, p < 0.001) all have significant negative effects on attention, participation, and attendance among students. The regression model accounted for more than 91% of the variances covered under attendance and participation, indicating the strong influence of social media activities. In conclusion, ubiquitous and multidimensional social media use decreases students' academic engagement in lectures, thus requiring urgent interventions by higher learning institutions to mitigate its negative effects. Such interventions should involve creating awareness, formulating relevant policies, and training students in efforts to have students effectively manage their social media use to help improve their academic performance.