INTRODUCTION

Background of the study

English Language is the medium of instruction and transmission in our secondary schools, and higher institutions and also the official language of our country Nigeria. Therefore, secondary school students need an efficient English language inorder to perform better and perfectly well. Fema, (2003), as cited in Sa'ad & Usman, (2014), was of the view that “a person is functionally literate when he acquired the knowledge and skills in reading and writing which enables him to engage effectively in all those activities in which literacy is normally assumed in his culture of group”. English language normally has four basic skills, namely listening, speaking, reading and writing. It is the medium of instruction in our schools and compulsory school subject that must be passed at all levels of education in Nigeria (Ochoyi & Danladi, 2008). 

Today, however, we are witnessing a trend, which is a great cause of concern for all stakeholders in the educational sector across the world. The concern is about the popularity, dominance and influence of social media on the academic performance of students, both of higher and of secondary education levels. Many recent studies have, consequently, underlined the positive and negative effects of social media on these students. (cf. Shah, Subramanian, Rouis, & Limayem, 2012; Miah, Omar & Allison-Golding, 2012; Ezeah, Asogwa & Edogor, 2013; Yahya, Olalekan, Afolabi, & Ayelaagbe 2013). The said influence is most evident in their use of English language and their performance in English language examinations.

Meanwhile, the social media is the fastest growing web application in the 21st century, a fact attested to by its wide usage and the wide-ranging consequent influence on the populace. There is indeed abundant evidence that millions of people across the world use social media on a regular basis for various reasons (Daluba & Maxwell, 2013). In fact, the wide nature of applications like Wikis, video streaming and applications, and social networks makes it the phenomenon of the century. 

Though social media use cuts across all age groups, studies have, in addition, shown that it is predominant among young persons (Onuoha & Saheed, 2011) and/or students (Dahlstrom, de Boor, Grunwald, & Vockley, 2011; Al-rahmi, Othman & Musa, 2014). In fact, Rosen (2011) found that while those born between 1965-1979 (‘Generation X’), spend approximately 13 hours per day on social media, those born between 1990-1999 (‘I Generation’) spend not less than 20 hours per day on social media. Kalra and Manani (2013) pointed out that these young people use social media for interaction, socialization and entertainment. 

Thus, while social media, generally, presents such benefits as encouraging greater social interaction via electronic mediums, promoting interactions among students and teachers, providing greater access to information and information sources, creating a sense of belonging among users, reducing barriers to group interaction and communications such as distance and social/economic status, and increasing the technological competency levels of frequent users, among others (Connolly, 2011; Zwart, Lindsay, Henderson & Phillips, 2011; Ahmed & Qazi, 2011); preliminary investigation and interviews with some teachers and students have, however, revealed a number of challenges in relation to student’s participation on social media networks and the many adverse influences on them. These include a high addiction rate, which affects their time of study, the wrong usage of grammar and spelling in social media discourse as well as distractions from their studies. As stated by Ndaku (2013), students spend a lot of time on social networking sites than in their academic activities and this affects their performance. Given the foregoing, therefore, this study seeks to investigate the influence of social media on the performance of senoir secondary school students in English language using Nsukka Education Zone of Enugu State.