Use of social media and reading habits among undergraduate students in University of Ilorin, Kwara State
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Date
2019-12-15
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Department of Library and Information Science, University of Ilorin
Abstract
A descriptive study was conducted among undergraduate students of the University of Ilorin to investigate social media use on their reading habits . The total population consists of 43,983 full-time undergraduates and purposive sampling technique was used to select the sample population from the faculties of Arts and Communication and Information Sciences which had a total population of 6,202 . Slovin formula was used to select a total sample of 376 students. A four point Likert Type Rating Scale Questionnaire was used to collect data from the respondents Three research questions guided the study and to achieve a very fine result, descriptive survey research design was adopted for the study.
Based on the results of the findings it can be concluded that social media has both positive and negative effects on the reading pattern of students. This is because they access social media everyday and spend more than one hour reading , social media has increased their access to foreign information. But social media has also had negative effects on their reading habit of academic textbooks because they have not completely read a textbook in the last few months, they have reduced usage of print since they started reading online ( since academic textbooks online do not come cheap) which can affect their academic performance. Finally, University of Ilorin students prefer reading news on social media to print newspapers which can make them to be grossly misinformed. Sources of news on the internet are highly infilterated and not validated. This can be misleading with a lot of fake news which can lead to social unrest.
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Keywords
Reading habits, Undergraduates, Social media use
Citation
Ajiboye, O.O. (2018): Use of social media and reading habits among undergraduate students in University of Ilorin, Kwara State. Ilorin Varsity International Journal of Library and Information Science 1(1&2),110-121. Published by Department of Library and Information Science, University of Ilorin.