Impact of Social Media on Academic Performance of Pupils. A Case Study of Chipepo Secondary School in Gwembe District

The study was the impact of social media on academic performance of pupils. A case study of Chipepo secondary school in Gwembe District in Southern Province, Zambia. The researcher used the descriptive quantitative research method supported partly by qualitative data. The population for the study consisted of 110 purposively selected grade 12 pupils in one (1) purposively selected secondary school (Chipepo) in Gwembe district in Zambia. A total sample of 40 grade 12 pupils were simple randomly selected using balloting from Chipepo secondary which was included in this study. The instrument used for the study was a thirty (31) item close ended questionnaire and an interview guide for research question 4. The data collected was coded and analyzed using descriptive statistics. Findings from the study revealed that male pupils used social media more than their counterparts the female pupils. Moderate time 61-90 minutes was spent by pupils on social media per day. The use of social media did not distract academic performance of pupils instead it helped them to improve academic performance. Pupils who used social media were middle aged to younger. Google was commonly used by pupils also WhatsApp and Facebook. It was therefore recommended that the Ministry of General Education and head teachers institute incentives that might help to encourage the use of social media in schools.


INTRODUCTION
Chipepo secondary is found in Gwembe District of Southern Province.It is situated along the Zambezi escarpment in the valley with three (3) of the secondary schools being in the remote areas and four (4) in rural areas out of the seven (7).It shares boundaries with Monze, Pemba, Mazabuka, Sinazongwe, Siavonga and Zimbabwe on the lake Kariba.Gwembe District is approximately 260 kilometers to the south of Lusaka the capital city of Zambia.The sub-boma is 17 kilometres from Chisekesi on the Livingstone-Lusaka highway.The District Council offices are 33 kilometres away from the sub-boma.Most of the secondary school going pupils normally use social media.Despite the secondary schools and the community putting up a number of measures to restrict the use of smart phones by the learners, there was a high level of using social media by learners which would affect their academic performance positively or negatively.However, the Zambia Education Curriculum Framework (ZECF) 2013 advocated the teaching of ICT to learners at all levels.

LITERATURE REVIEW
In the world today, most people have continued to live as citizens of a single country or a nation because of the advanced networking systems resulted by social media which has become one of the most essential communication means nowadays towards the exchange of data, knowledge and unknown information.The great growth of the internet has a high impact on pupils` academic performance in which they interact and socialize.Both negative and positive impacts has been created as pupils use social media for good and bad information is being accessed or rather spread in the process.As Social Media Technology (SMT) is developing rapidly, as is not only constrained to net-based technology but also compatible with mobile technology, it convokes any user to complete her/his communication easily through the digital devices.It was attested that Whatsapp, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as the most common social media platforms (Alwagait, Shahzad, & Alim, 2015;Michikyan, Subrahmanyam, & Dennis, 2015).A number of studies were carried out across the world to find out the impact of social media in different organizations and settings for it has been used in various different ways by all walks of people regardless of age as well as by different countries throughout the recent past years.A study in Egypt indicates that, Egypt is known to be one of the heavy users of social media, specifically Facebook.It takes over 25% of the total MENA region, having almost 11 million users, even though the penetration rate is only about 13%.Egypt had an increase of 1,608,420 users on Facebook in the first six months of the year 2012, which is the uppermost number in the MENA region.Luke Richards alluded that 46% of Egyptian social media users accept as true that social media has a lot of influence in sanctioning them to change their country (Richards, 2012).Nonetheless, Dr. Anthony Curtis, in 2014, it is highlighted that there is about 1.28 billion Facebook users and 255 million Twitter users, 55 million of the Facebook users and 3.7 million of the Twitter users are from the Arab world (Curtis, 2013).Another research reveals that, India is the third biggest country in terms of internet users in the world, with a high social and mobile audience.Social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Orkut among others distracting pupils from their studies.Pupils use a lot of their time on social media as well as social networking than they do using personnel email.Social Networking is "the act of engagement," while social media is the tool used to communicate with mass audience (Rithika, 2015).Even though, there is loss of privacy and safety, social media provides opportunities for connecting with friends, classmates,

Pupils` Academic Performance
and people with shared interest.Today, the main aim of the student should be education and their future career.However, many students rely on the accessibility of information on social media (Hartshorn, 2010).Another study conducted in the United States of America by O'Keeffe and Pearson reveals that, in the American Academy of Pediatrics, there are a couple of benefits to social media use.They believe one of the most essential benefits of social media is that it improves how an individual comprehends himself by engaging with others, and becoming creative through blogging.This leads to better results in their individual school work.Another important benefit according to the dual afforementioned, is the fact that using social media gives pupils the chance to improve their learning, since they have the opportunity to share knowledge with one another and conduct group projects more efficiently (El Khatib & Khan, 2017).Social Media has also completely changed pupils' mode of learning and their studying style and the general set-up.Learners started using these sites as resources to get information and help themselves towards their completing assessments, projects, assignments and other related academic work among others (O'Keeffe and Pearson, 2011).This is prompting social media to become a catalyst in the field of education growth in many institutions of learning including secondary schools.In regard to the use of social media, Zambia is not an exception.The 2015 survey conducted by the Zambia Information and Communications Technology Authority (ZICTA) on the use of social media by the university students in Zambia indicates that it is also increasing at a faster rate.In the same study, ZICTA observes that 63% of Internet users in Zambia spend their time online on social networking sites, meanwhile, about 71% of those that are in possession of smart phones use their gadgets to access whatsapp, Skype, Facebook, Viber and Twitter for communication using instant messaging or voice calling (ZICTA, 2015).Social Media is the platform that give individuals the opportunity to interact, using two way communication; implying that anyone who has online accounts can share her/his opinions with other social media users (Hartshorn, 2010).There are two types of social media users namely; digital natives and digital immigrants.Digital natives are those who were born after 1980, they came to this world when the digital media existed.However, digital immigrants are those who were born before 1980 and adapted their lives to digital media (AntonSon and Christopher, 2014).Curtis (2013) suggested that online social networks could possibly be viewed as helpful educational technology if the more academic staff actually knew how to incorporate them into their curricula.Baker (2019) claimed that social media networking sites drew the attention of the students and increase their academic grade points.Hartshorn (2010) insisted that social media should be used for educational purposes but with proper monitoring and counseling as the chances of students becoming addicted so social media is high.Richards (2012) confirmed that social media affect the relationships of the people and the methods of their learning.Bankers also use social media sites to enhance customer service by means of building a relationship through Electronic Customer Relations Management depending upon the information reliability and responsiveness (Wentworth & Middleton 2014).Boyd (2017) confirmed that internal medicine educators are using SNS and interacting with their trainees online.Rithika (2015) indicated that the majority of the academia believe strongly in the pedagogical values and benefits of using social media as an English language training tool in the Saudi context but they expressed reservations using in the classrooms.Alwagait et al. (2015) propounded that pupils should be motivated to use social media for educational purposes and the networking sites should expand folios for academic activities.Rideout (2010) suggested the utilization of social media in education by developing intrinsic activities as it is beneficial.Utilizing social media tools in education sometimes can be very demanding and challenging for educators to assure effective learning (O`keeffe & Pearson, 2010).Paul et al. (2012) indicated that the pupils' academic performance is a function of devotion span, time management skills, student characteristics, and time spent on online social media.Rithika (2015) insisted that pupils should be enthused to use hand phones with internet facilities but with restricted timing to social media as it adversely affects their academic achievements.Baker (2019) claimed that the pupils are becoming highly addicted to and intermediation is needed to control the same and also reported that YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter were the most used social media platforms (in their order of preference).Richards (2012) proved that the most common social media platform used was Facebook and social media had affected the academic performance of pupils negatively.Rideout et al. (2010) claimed that male pupils are spending more time on social media and WhatsApp and Facebook as their favorite platforms.Rithika (2015) advocated that there exists no relationship between social media and the pupil's academic performance.But, Alwagait et al. (2015) confirmed that the social media platforms had distracted the attention of the pupils from their studies resulting in negative performances.Curtis (2013) indicated that extensive use of Facebook by students with extraverted personalities leading to poor academic performances.Rithika (2015) proved that social media has an inverse relationship with academic performance due to fading communication barriers and rising easy access in data.Baker (2019) found out that the majority of pupils were using their smartphones/computers for social networks.Boyd (2017) stated that, among the younger generation, the time they spend on social media, what she calls 'entertainment media' is "more than twice the average amount of time spent in school each year."(Rideout, 2012) She also added that an American child spends on average seven and a half hours a day just for having fun on the media, not only that, but they multi-task, between all the different media they use.For example, they can be listening to music, sending a tweet and also posting on Facebook.Rideout says, that since social media is seven days a week, unlike school or having a full-time job, over the years the amount of time one could spend over the internet "has exploded" (Rideout, 2012).Pardo (2013) believed that technology offered a platform for innovation, and allowed its users to express their opinions about how they felt towards the information being published.He added that, social media was also a platform that allowed pupils to interact with one another, with their teachers and communities that share their same education.Pardo also stated that these types of interaction were "an essential part of how humans learn."(Pardo, 2013).Social media platforms differ from Web blogs, to micro-sharing platforms, to life streamed to social networks and much more (AntonSon and Christopher, 2014).However, in this research paper, the focus would be the impact of social media on academic performance pupils for these pupils of the 21 st Century (the younger generation) were very advanced and liked trying their minds most often than not.The younger generation discussed in this research paper were school pupils between the ages of 12 to 20 years old.A few of the platforms they used were Facebook, YouTube, Google, and many others that were discussed in the findings of this research.The younger generation were the individuals that would lead our world in the future, they must be well educated to be able to impact this world and make a remarkable difference to better their countries` success for they are the future leaders.Khan, Hatami, Sasidharan, and Al-Roshdi (2017) asserted that a number of people especially pupils are actively engaged in one or the other social media platforms and earn benefits out of it.Baker (2019) added that the use of social networks could be an effective tool to motivate people, more importantly pupils to develop future bonding for they are the leaders of tomorrow.Social Networking Systems (SNS) has nowadays in the 21 st Century become integral points for the youth to express their thoughts in unique ways with other like-minded people and considered as a place to share their artistic abilities (Boyd, 2017).Nonetheless people get prior information about the institutions to which they are willing to join through the so called blogs of such networking sites.Social Media has also completely changed pupils' mode of learning and their studying style and the general set-up.Learners started using these sites as resources to get information and help themselves towards their completing assessments, projects, assignments and other related academic work among others (El Khatib & Khan, 2017).University students make up the major proportion of the online networking community.In addition, given the popularity of social media, many lecturers have started to use social media for improving communication with and among students in their classes, class discussions, and teamwork on projects to enhance learning outcomes.Many Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have even started using web technology in promoting education and have started implementing their assessments using such growing technologies.Henceforth, the level of comprehending of the students is becoming high and their learning expectations also becoming high.This is prompting social media to become a catalyst in the field of education growth in many institutions of learning including secondary schools.

RESEARCH DESIGN
The descriptive survey method was used in this research.It adopted quantitative approaches supported partly by qualitative data.Amin (2012) defined a research design as the scheme, outline or plan that is used to generate answers to research problems.

TARGET POPULATION, SAMPLE AND SAMPLING PROCEDURE
The study focused on a population of 110 purposively selected grade 12 pupils in the one (1) purposively selected secondary school (Chipepo) in Gwembe district in Zambia.A population was a group of individuals, objects or items from which samples were taken for measurements (Tromp: 2006).The district comprised of seven (7) co-education government secondary schools offering both junior and senior education of which two are boarding schools.In these seven secondary schools in the district, there was a varying enrolment which ranged between 230 to about 400 pupils in each school respectively with at least 60 to 120 grade 12 pupils.The study only concentrated on one (1) purposively selected secondary school which was Chipepo.A sample of 40 pupils were simple randomly selected from the one (1) purposively selected secondary school (Chipepo) using balloting.

DATA ANALYSIS
The researcher used the tables to present results.Ary et al (2013) postulated that, data analysis was the process of examining what has been collected in a survey or experience thereby, making deduction.The researcher in the first place gathered data using both quantitative and qualitative methods.Thereafter, the researcher interpreted the data in order to understand the problem in depth.The descriptive quantitative statistics was used for all the four (4) research question however, qualitative data was also obtained on research question 4. Quantitative data collected was analyzed using descriptive statistics in the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 23. 0. Measures of the central tendency (mean) and measures of dispersion (standard deviation) was used to analyze the data.Qualitative data collected using interviews was analyzed using Content analysis

ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS
The researcher got permission from the Gwembe District Education Board Secretary (GDEBS), and school authorities to administering questionnaires to 40 respondents.The respondents were assured of the confidentiality of the data collected as it would remain anonymous.The researcher also used pseudo names for the random sampling of objects.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS
Below were the results obtained from the field and were presented in succession as follows: Tables 4.1 and 4.2 show the demographic characteristics of pupils (respondents) according to Sex and Age.4.1 above shows that 24 (58.5%) of the respondents were males and 16 (41.5%)were females.This shows that the use of social media was dominated by males.This was because female pupils were more occupied with other responsibilities than males.The male pupils are more adventurous in as far as the use of new technology such as social media than their female counterparts (Curtis, 2013).22 (53.7%) were aged between 16-20 years, while 13 (31.7%)were aged between 12-15 years.Five (14.6 %) were aged between 21-25 years and none of the respondents were aged 26 and above.This implied that most of the pupils who use social media were middle aged to younger.
The reason could be that the middle aged and younger pupils have ample time to socialize than older ones who begin to wonder on how life would be after school hence planning for the future.Younger pupils are often keen on exploring and trying out whatever they come across with.Serpell (2014) observed that older employees were generally more focused with the future than their younger counterparts and middle-aged pupils might still have more to achieve.Section B composed of four (4) research questions where respondents stated their level of agreement based on a five-point likert scale from Strongly Disagree (SD) 1 to Strongly Agree (SA) 5.

Research Question 1
What types of Social Media platforms are commonly used by pupils in secondary schools in Gwembe district?Table 4.3 below show the types of Social Media platforms commonly used by pupils in secondary schools as responded to by the pupils.Table 4.3 below shows that pupils strongly agreed that they commonly use Google with a mean of 4.53 an indication that they are very highly satisfied with the use of Google.Pupils agreed that they commonly use WhatsApp and Facebook with mean ranges 4. 38 and 4.05 an indication that they are highly satisfied using the two.The respondents disagreed that they use Twitter, Youtube, Skype and that they regularly use other social media platforms not mentioned with mean ranges 2.12, 2.07, 1.58 and 1.60 respectively implying that they are fairly satisfied.The pupils strongly disagreed that they normally use Instagram and generally use Viber.However, the standard deviations of 0.705, 0.677, 0.555, 0.586, 0.636, 0.640 and 0.591 indicated that they were homogeneous in their responses.This meant that they were all in agreement on the aforementioned items.They were also heterogeneous to their responses as indicated by the high standard deviations to the items which are 1.137 and 1.185.4.4 above show reasons pupils give as to why they use Social Media in secondary schools as responded to by the pupils.Table 4.4 above affirmed that pupils agreed on three items that they use social media to obtain new academic information, they use social media to facilitate school work and that they use social media to share good things with friends mean ranges 4.43 , 4.37 and 4.30 an indication that they are highly satisfied with the said items.The respondents were undecided on the other three items that they use social media because teachers encourage us to do so, they use social media to keep in touch with the family and that they use social media because it is the New curriculum`s demands (ICT) with mean ranges 2.95 and 3.37.on the other hand, the pupils disagreed on some items with mean ranges 2.00, 2.20 and 2.40 which implied that they were fairly satisfied with such items.The pupils strongly disagreed that they use social media to share bad things with peers with a mean of 1.30.However on the 10 items above, the respondents were heterogeneous in their responses on 6 items with more than one standard deviations while on the other four items they were homogeneous with the standard deviations less than one.4.5 above show the amount of time pupils spend on social media in secondary schools as responded to by the pupils.Table 4.5above attested that pupil disagreed on three items that they usually spend 30 minutes or less per day on Social Media, they generally spend 91-120 minutes per day on Social Media and that they normally spend 120 and above minutes per day on Social Media with mean ranges1.87,1.95 and 1.72.this implied that they were fairly satisfied with the items in question.The pupils agreed on an item with a mean of 3.92 that they regularly spend 61-90 minutes per day on Social Media an indication that they are highly satisfied with the item.The mean of 2.68 show that the pupils were undecided with the item which means that the respondents were moderately satisfied.The standard deviations 0.723, 0.656 and 0.997 show the homogeneity of respondents in their responses.The homogeneous response means that is an agreement in a response.However, the two standard deviations 1.260 and 1.377 show that the respondents were not in an agreement on the two stated items hence the heterogeneous in their responses.

Research Question 4 What impact does Social Media have on the academic performance of pupils in secondary schools in Gwembe district?
Table 4.6 below show the impact Social Media have on the academic performance of pupils in secondary schools as responded to by the pupils.Table 4.6 below show that on the seven items, pupils were highly satisfied with two items that the use of Social media platforms has helped them to improve academic performance and that the use of social media has impacted positively on their school work which they agreed with the means 4.40 and 3.78.The pupils disagreed on some five items that the use of social media has impacted negatively on their school work, they spend a lot of time on social media as compared to the time they spend on their studies, Some social media platforms distract them from academic performance, there is no improvement in their results since they became engaged into these social networking sites, and that their academic productivity suffers because of using social media with means 2.12, 1.62, 1.70 and 1.55.The respondents were heterogeneous in their responses on six items.However, they were only homogeneous on an item."Social media has helped me to improve on my academic performance in a sense that when I don't understand some of the concepts, I just share it to my fellow pupils who assist me with solutions, Employee recognition programs motivates and improves our performance, it has also specifically improved my English skills".

CONCLUSION
From the research findings, it was evident that males use social media more than their counterparts, the females.Moderate time 61-90 minutes is spent by pupils on social media per day.The use of social media did not distract academic performance of pupils instead it help them to improve academic performance.Pupils who used social media were middle aged to younger.Google was commonly used by pupils also WhatsApp and Facebook.

RECOMMENDATIONS
Based on the conclusion from the study, the following recommendations were made; the Ministry of Education (MoE) should support and encourage the use of social media platforms by pupils in schools to support ICT in order to improve academic performance of pupils.Also the MoE should put up computer laboratories in all the schools to promote quality education in ICT.The head of schools should make efforts to make the environment conducive for learning and teaching of ICT even encourage pupils of the 21 st century to be using smart phones in schools and abolish rules that do not allow pupils to be using phones in schools.The headteachers should also ensure that outstanding pupils in ICT should be recommended for awards to encourage others especially females to develop the interest in the use of social media.
All teachers in schools to do a refresher course in ICT so as to be role models and get connected to the entire world for social media enabled everyone to live in a global village.Secondary school pupils should make sure that they use these social networking sites judiciously to ensure that they do not become detrimental to their academics.The researcher recommended the following for further researches: An assessment on the impact of social media on academic performance of pupils in primary schools could be conducted as well as a similar study could be conducted at tertially level for wider generalization.

Figure 1 :
Figure 1: Variables Associated with the study

Question 3
What is the amount of time do pupils spend on Social Media in secondary schools in Gwembe district?Table 4.5 Amount of Time pupils spend on Social Media (N=40) ITEM N Mean Std.Deviation I usually spend 30 minutes or less per day on Social Media.40 1.87 .723I most often spend 31-60 minutes per day on Social Media.40 2.68 .656I regularly spend 61-90 minutes per day on Social Media.40 3.92 .997I generally spend 91-120 minutes per day on Social Media.

Table 4 .2 : Age for pupils (N=40) Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent
Table 4.2 above shows the distribution of respondents according to age.From the table, it was evident that a greater number of pupils

Table 4 .6 The impact Social Media have on the academic performance of pupils (N=40) ITEM N Mean Std. Deviation
On the interviews conducted regarding research question four on what impact did Social Media have on the academic performance of pupils in secondary schools in Gwembe district, in answering this question, one of the respondents said: