Social Media Addiction and Moral Behaviour Development of Students of Shehu Shagari College of Education, Sokoto

Abstract

The study examined the relationship between social media addiction and moral behaviour among students of Shehu Shagari College of Education, Sokoto. The research hypothesized that there was no significant  relationship between these two variables, and that there was no significant difference between social media addicts and non-addicts in terms of  moral behaviour among the respondents. The research design used was descriptive survey of correlational type. The target population for this study was 6, 120 students made up of the entire NCE II students of Shehu Shagari College of Education, Sokoto. The students averagely aged between 18 and 29 were heterogeneous in terms of religion, sex, tribe, and economic backgrounds. Stratified, random and proportionate sampling techniques were employed to arrive at 333 respondents using the Research Advisors table (2006). Two instruments were used by the study: Social Media Addiction Scale (SMAS) adapted by Al-Menayes (2015) and Moral Behaviour Scale developed by Rettig & Pasamanick (1959) adapted by Dogara (2017). Pearson correlation was used on the first hypothesis which was bi-dimensional, and chi-square test of independence was run on the second hypothesis. The results showed there was no significant relationship between social media addiction and moral behaviour development. There was, however, no significant difference between addicts and non-addicts among the 333 samples. The research concluded from its results that, there was no significant relationship between social media addiction and moral behaviour development, and there was also no significant difference between social addicts and non-addicts in terms of moral behaviour.  The researchers therefore recommended that parents, guardians, teachers, and government should ensure that children and adolescents do not significantly fall prey to the downsides of social media. Each category has a specific role to play with respect to young people's addiction to social networks