Effect Of Modern System Of Communication On The Academic Focus And Performance Of Students

INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the study
Communication has its root in Latin from the world “Communicare” where it use embraced impact, to participate, to share and to make common. It evolved as a word to mean transmission of what is intangible rather than material things.
Communication is expressed as the process of creating, transmitting and using information to influence the behavior of other individuals and influenced in return (Ikpe, 2000). According to (Scherba, 2002) communication is any act by which one person gives to or receives from another person information, about that persons needs, desires perceptions, knowledge or affective state. It may be intentional or unintentional, may involve conventional or unconventional signal, make take linguistic or non-linguistic from and may occur through spoken or other modes.
Communication as we all know is part of man’s existence and according to wikipedia, 2001, its history dates back to pre-history when human communication was revolutionized with speech perhaps 200,000 years ago. The imperfection of speech which nonetheless allowed easier dissemination of ideas and stimulated inventions, eventually resulted in the creation of new forms of communication improving both range at which people communicate and the longevity of the information. Symbols where then developed at about 30,000 years ago and writing about 7,000 years ago. On a much shorter scale, there have been major developments in the fields, of telecommunication in the past few centuries.
Telecommunication is a term coming from Greek and meaning communication at distance through signals of varied nature. According to what is .com, telecommunication is the exchange of information over significant distance by electronic means.
The desire for telecommunication was felt as soon as man began to settle in families, communities, societies and needed to achieve goals and objectives. In order to achieve communication, the choice of a proper means of transport for the signal has played and still plays a fundamental role. In ancient times, the most common way of producing a signal would be through light (fire and smoke) and sound (drums, metal gong, wooden gong, animal horns, musical instruments, gunshots, flutes). However, this kind of communication were insecure and certainly left room for improvement as they did not permit message encryption nor a fast transmission of information on a large scale.
As a result of these limitations and the advancement of the society, the ancient system of telecommunication gave way to the modern system of telecommunication. The starting point of modern telecommunication could be traced to the invention of the electric cell by Allsandro Volta in 1800, ever since, modern telecommunication has experienced a remarkable technological advancement from the birth of the internet in 1969 and the World Wide Web (WWW) by Tim Berners Tee in 1989 with it invention public in 1993. With these latest invention a lot of web based sites now exists amongst which is the Social Network Sites which provide Social Networking Services.
Social networking sites are web based services that allow individuals to:
1. Construct a profile or semi-profile within a bounded system.
2. Articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection.
3. View and transverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system.
Social networking sites are currently being used by millions of people world wide. The use of social Networking sites has been widespread that they have not only caught the attention of academic and individual researchers’ world wide but also us in particular. (Banquil et. al. 2009) observed that social Networking sites are now being investigated by numerous social science researchers and an increasing number of academic commentators are becoming more and more interested in studying Face book, Twitter and other social Networking services because of their probable impact on society.
Social Networking sites has been very popular for people worldwide for the past few years, and on many of the large, participants are not necessary networking or looking forward to meet new people, instead, they are primarily communicating with people who are already a part of their extended network.
For teenagers in this generation, social Networking has become sort of an addition and many students have been blaming various social networking sites for their steady decrease in grade point average (Banquil et. al. 2009). Also, according to data complied by (Education Data Base Online, 2011) it was found that students who multitask between Face book (Most popular Social Networking Site world wide) and studying have 20 percent lower grades and study less overall than students who do not use the network. Also, form the same source, studies actually show that students that use twetter typically have up to half grade point higher scores than students that do not.
Many teenagers being addicted to social Networking sites open account daily to check new updates until they realize they have more important things to do like school work they have missed doing because of singing in into a social network site. Yet, they are willing to spend more time being online on these social networking sites than to spend more time studying and working up on school work. Face book which requires all users to be over the age of 13 was reported on July 13th 2011 that an estimated 7.5 million users are underage. These underage users will find it difficult if not impossible to multitask between networking and studying resulting therefore in a decrine of academic performance of such users.
These emergent phenomenon have aroused us to look into social Networking sites and their effect on students academic performance. The target population for this research was defined as the students who form the major chunk of users of these social networking sites. This was done to have a better insight into the research as the target population was one of the most avid users of these sites and are quite clear to them the reasons they use it and the various effects it has on their academic performance and could hence provide exceptional responses.

1.2 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM
Social Networking sites are currently being used regularly by millions of people world wide, face book (The most popularly used social Networking sites world wide) which was created by a college student for college students to communication and share information and which was only available to students of higher education now have an estimated 750 million active monthly users of which students form a major chunk users, some of which are either underage or not already in institution of higher learning.
(Wilson et. al. 2008), observed that the percentage of student who said they never used social networking sites have fallen from 25 percent in 2000 to 11 percent in 2008. Even with the claims that social Networking sites are beneficial like helping people to socialize, share information, drive out loneliness, keep in touch, it still posses a lot of adverse effects in the lives of youth today of which majority of them are students.
This adverse effect may imply that people who use these sites especially our concern the student do not know the proper usage of social Networking sites.
Secondly, it suggests that students are being addicted to these sites to the detriment of their school works.
In another assertion, the controversy lies on the fact that the adverse effects of these sites may be more imminent than it positive effects. The question however is what are the effects of social Networking sites on the academic focus and performance of students in Enugu East Local Government Area of Enugu State? Finding an answer to this question is the major concern of this study.

1.3 Objective of the Study
The purpose of this research is to elicit from students in Enugu East Local Government Area of Enugu state the extent to which they use social networking sites and the effects it has on their academic focus and performance. Specifically the researchers intend to
i. Determine the extent of use of social Networking sites.
ii. Find out the adverse effects of social networking sites on students academic focus and performance
iii. Find out if there are contrasting effects to its adverse effect
iv. Determine if the adverse effects of social Networking sites are more imminent that its contrasting effect.
v. Association findings to personal lives of adolescent and society in general.

1.4 Significance of the Study
1.5 Scope of the study
The study was carried out in secondary schools in Enugu East Local Government Area of Enugu state. The study investigates the effects of social Networking on academic focus and performance of students. Some percentage of the students and teachers from the selected schools were sampled.

1.6 Research Question
The following research questions addressed and guided the study:
i. To what extent does students make use of social Networking sites?
ii. What are the adverse effects of social Networking sites on students academic focus and performance?
iii. Are there any contrasting effects to the adverse effects of social networking sites?
iv. Is the adverse effect of social Networking sites more imminent than its contrasting effects?

1.7 Definition of Terms
In order to understand clearly the subject matter the following key concept are defined; social Networking sites and Academic performance as they are essential to fully comprehend the issue in focus.
1. Social Networking sites (SNS), These are social Network services that focus on building online communities of people who share common interests and/or activities of others.
2. Academic performance this refers to how students deal with their studies and how they cope with or accomplish different task given to them by their teachers. It is the ability to communicate your knowledge verbally or down on paper.