Social media addictions as a predictor of concentration during lectures among pre-service teachers in Kwara State, Nigeria

Abstract

Recently, in developing countries, sociology of education has added smartphone addiction to its nomenclature as a term, but the current issue that now requires serious attention is social media addiction, as the use of social media by most pre-service teachers is widespread enough to spill into other areas of their lives, not excluding their interest in the lecture hall. The study examined the level of social media addiction, as it predicts the level of concentration of pre-service teachers during lessons in Universities in Kwara State, Nigeria. The target population for this study contained all the pre-service teachers of the Faculty of Education, in two public Universities, with a population of 14,139 out of which 1,332 respondents were sampled. Two questionnaire forms with psychometric properties of contents validity of 0.86 and a reliability index of 0.72 were used to collect the data. The data collected were analyzed using descriptive and Regression statistics. The results indicated that pre-service teachers were highly addicted to the use of social media and reduced their level of concentration in class. The hypothesis raised was rejected, which implies that addiction to social media predicts the level of concentration of pre-service teachers during lessons. The report suggests prohibiting pre-service teachers from the overuse of social media.