Libraries at University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Date of this Version
1-18-2017
Abstract
Social media are web-based services that allow individuals to construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. This study was designed to investigate socio-economic status, peer pressure and use of social media by undergraduates in the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Four research questions were raised and four (3) null hypotheses were formulated alongside. The research design that was adopted for the study was descriptive research design of the correlational type. Data was collected from 232 students in University of Ibadan. Data analysis was done in an SPSS output format based on simple frequency count and percentage distribution, mean, standard deviation to answer the research questions. The Pearson’s Chi-Square was used to test he null hypothesis 1, the Pearson’s Correlation was used to test the null hypotheses 2 while, Multiple Regression Analysis was used to test the hypotheses 3 and 4. The findings revealed that the social media used by the undergraduates include: Flickr, Facebook, WhatsApp, Ebuddy, Twitter, Academia.edu, Netlog and Wiki. Socio-economic status that contribute more to the undergraduates’ use of social media include: parental occupation, parental educational qualification, among others. Socio-economic status has significant relationship with use of social media (i.e. Χ2 = 9.797, p < 0.05); peer pressure significantly has relationship with use of social media (r = -.163**; P<0.05); socio-economic status and peer pressure jointly and significantly influence the use of social media by the undergraduate students (r = .305 and a multiple R2 of .093; F [2, 229] = 11.730; p < 0.05); and socio-economic status and peer pressure has joint effect on use of social media by the undergraduate students (B = .271; t = 4.208; p < 0.05). The recommendations that were made include: university authorities should seek to appreciate the use of social media for academic purpose; researchers should focus more on studies of social media use in education, etc.