Demographics, Social Media Use and Perceived Academic Stress of Secondary School Students in St. Thomas Aquinas College, Akure, Nigeria

1. Introduction

The need to ensure quality education for all has become crucial to development and better living as reflected by the United Nations global agenda. The development agenda to transform our world and make it a better place resolves that inclusive and quality education for all is a vehicle to achieving sustainable development. Every Nation must look into her education sector as part of her resolution to achieve sustainable development. Therefore, education is considered an instrument for national development and the pre-tertiary level or secondary school requires crucial attention in vitalizing the overall system. The International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) stipulated that education is implemented at different age levels and denominations ranging from level 0 to level 6, where level 2, 3 and 4 represents lower secondary (junior secondary), upper secondary (senior secondary) and post-secondary non-tertiary education respectively (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2012). In Nigeria however, secondary school education falls in the purview of level 2 and 3 by the ISCED, these two levels will henceforth be referred to as secondary school education for the purpose of this present study.

Secondary school education in Nigeria is structured to take place for six years, which is three years each for the two levels. The objectives according to UNESCO-IBE (2006) are to: “equip students to live effectively in the modern age of science and technology; raise a generation of people who can think for themselves, respect the views and feelings of others, respect the dignity of labor, and live as good citizens; foster the Nigerian unity with an emphasis on the common ties that unite within diversity; and foster the desire for achievement and self-improvement.” As part of achieving these objectives, the secondary school students are subjected to learning various subject areas in their respective classes and the challenge to perform well in these subjects, coupled with other challenges typical of adolescences (which is usually the age of secondary school students) results to academic stress.

Academic stress according to Lal (2014) is the mental distress with respects to some anticipated frustration associated with academic failure or even unawareness to the possibility of such failure. In the view of García-Ros, Pérez-González, and Tomás (2018), academic stress which is prevalent among adolescence occurs at different stages of educational system affecting students’ personal, emotional and physical well-being, as well as their learning and performance levels. Meanwhile perceive academic stress refers to the consciousness of unpleasant situations that students encounter due to academic related demands on them including the need to pass an examination, maintaining healthy academic lives, competing with peers and meeting the academic expectations of their parents and teachers (Aihie & Ohanaka, 2019). For secondary school students, academic related activities and the corresponding need to succeed could impose in them a mental distress termed academic stress. This corroborates the position of Deb, Strodl, and Sun (2015) that school-related situations like tests, grades, studying, need to succeed imposed by self and others are the main sources of stress for high school students. While these are some of the well-known academic stressors of secondary school students, there are possibilities that the students’ demographic characteristics could also influence their academic stress level. This study focuses on age, department (art, social sciences and science) and the class of student as demographic characteristics likely to act as stressors to secondary school students. In addition to demographics, secondary school students’ use of social media has become very high with the likelihood of causing metal distress and invariably academic stress.

Social media is considered by Kietzmann et al. (2011) as a platform that introduces mobile and web-based innovations in order to create highly interactive avenues, through which people create, recreate, co-create, and disseminate different kinds of information. According to Mehmood and Taswir (2013), the introduction of the use of social media sites and the Internet is one of the best innovations which is still growing and has the capacity of influencing educational performance of students either positively or adversely. There are reports that social media is geometrically being patronized in this current dispensation and still growing. In 2015, Facebook platform alone stated that there were 1.49 billion customers that had an account with them (Kaya & Bicen, 2016). Some examples of social media platforms are YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google+, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Skype, IMO and Badoo, as well as other allied interactive sites.

Social media platforms according to Dhir and Tsai (2017) are popularly in use by majorly young adults and students at different levels of educational pursuit. These young adults are adolescence dominantly in the secondary school level of education. The concept of social media can either make or mar the academic journey of secondary school students depending on how students perceive them and what they use the media for. It is on this note that Akcaoglu and Bowman (2016) showed in their study that social media has more positive impact than the negative. They opined that social media play a considerable role to engage students in learning processes, feeling closer to their course materials and seeing their teachers as being more involved in the task of teaching. They further stated that social media has the capacity of boosting collaborative learning among the students. On the other hand, some authors comfortably outlined the risks which are related to frequent use of these media, for instance, Kokkinos and Saripanidis (2017) averred that there are various negative effects that are recorded with excessive use of those media which are isolation, depression, cyber bullying, peer initiation and academic fluctuations. However, whether or not social media use will lead to academic stress of secondary school students is open to scholarly investigation; hence the main objective of this study is to investigate the influence of demographics and social media use on the academic stress of secondary school students in Aquinas College, Akure, Ondo State, Nigeria.

2. Literature Review

There appears to be a strong addiction in the use of social media by the young adults or adolescence, and students by extension. This was elaborated by Bello in Peter (2015) when the author pointed out that if the trend of social media obsession by students is not put on critical check, it could lead to a further problem to already collapsing education system in Nigeria. The advent of social media which is supposed to be a welcome invention is unfortunately being threatened due to the abuse of use by some teenage students. This is because some students can afford to practically stay on social media throughout the day without an attempt to read their books. Kolan and Dzandza (2018) affirmed that studies have it that over 95% of school students use social media sites. They also stated that students use the social media networks at least 30 minutes throughout the day as part of their daily routine. In a similar vein, Ogundijo (2014) stated that in Nigeria today, secondary school students are obsessed with social networking that they spend so much time on it to the extent that their academic scores suffer for it. Duggan and Smith (2013) opined in their study that 63% of Facebook users visit the site at least daily, on Instagram, 57% respondents of users use the app on a daily basis. 46% of respondents use Twitter daily, 23% of Pinterest users and 13% of LinkedIn users said they visit the sites daily. Social media addiction is an issue to consider among young adults, this was disclosed in a research carried out by Smith and Anderson (2018) where about half of social media users studied (ages 18 to 24) which is 51% state that it will be a daunting task for them to do without social media in life.

On the most used social medial tool, it depends to a large extent on the purpose for using such platform. This was particularly supported by Mingle and Adams (2015) when their research on preferred social media tool established that WhatsApp is the most popular social media platform used by Ghanaian students followed by Facebook and Twitter. In connection with the above, Ogaji et al. (2017) disclosed that in Kenya, more than half of the undergraduates studied pointed out that they will continue to use WhatsApp even if its cost becomes financially unbearable as they are fond of the conviviality they derived from social media sites. It is quite difficult if not impossible for today students to do without social media applications. Thus, Akakandelwa and Walubita (2017) shared same opinion by asserting that digital consumers presently spend an average of 1 hour, 58 minutes per day on social media and messaging; according to Chaffey this number has increased by another 20 minutes as at 2017.

There are numerous reasons why students use social media applications, some of the reasons as stated by Akakandelwa and Walubita (2017) are to obtain new information, to keep in touch with friends, facilitating school work, keeping in touch with family, chatting with others to find new friends and to share bad things with friends. Some authors believe that people may not physically be meeting frequently because of their tight schedule. This point was particularly supported by Sharma and Shukla (2016) by saying that young people engage in social media because this digital and busy planet does not make provision for people to always stay together physically for the sole purpose of interacting. By what we see today, some students also join the social media platforms for selfish gains, this they prosecute by engaging in defrauding their fellow gullible and naïve colleagues. Other students join social media to enable them to market their goods as some students are also business oriented. Popularity is another reason why most students find social media attractive. It is very important to note here that, some students indulge in social media platforms for sexual exploration purposes. This Adu-kumi (2016) found that though students don’t desperately ask for sexual material such as sex chips and porn videos, they along the line come across some social media platforms that encourage the above points listed. Subsequently, the use of social media by these young students in secondary schools takes so much of their time, attention and mental health, which will invariably cause them academic stress.

The concept of stress is seen as a main burden on an individual which is said to have exceeded the available assets of the person. It is a known fact therefore that if stress is not curbed, it leads to poor academic performances of students. The stress concept is not new in the journey of secondary school students towards achieving success. This is hinged on the fact that, both their curricula and extra curricula activities are laced with stressful activities. Being seen as the capable students, behoove on them to always be above board, in a bid to meet up with expectations, they are likely to encounter stress and anxiety which have negative effects on them (Saw, Berenbaum, & Okazaki, 2013). Academic stress can therefore be defined as a student’s psychological response to educational related needs that overstretch adaptive capabilities of students. Saleh et al. (2018) stated that of the 97,357 college students that were studied, 39% affirmed that academic stress is a reality as it leads to incomplete, dropped courses or a poor grade. Other common academic stresses are identified as academic overload, lack of time to meet commitments and taking exams. Other outcomes of academic stress by secondary students are lack of confidence, inability to make academic decisions, lack of relaxation after lectures, critical nature of teachers, fear of failing some courses etc.

School related stress has been seen to be the commonest, it is said to be an untreated cause of academic failure in our secondary schools today and it is viewed to affect alarming 10 to 16 million secondary school students annually (Taragar, 2009). In academic struggle, competition is seen as a major stress factor as students strive for various positions in their classes. There are some factors that influence academic stress which are age, gender, social economic status, sibling status, psychological process, performance as stated by Taragar (2009). On their part also, Kadapatti and Khadi in Sinha (2013) conducted a research and found out that high aspirations, poor study habits, more study problems, low socio-economic conditions and change in the medium of instruction were the factors that significantly influenced academic stress.

Allen and Holder (2014) viewed academic stress as students’ state of mind that affects their outcomes or performance positively or negatively. This state of mind has an obvious relationship with the demographic characteristics of the students. This was made clear by Persaud and Persaud (2016) when they averred that a student’s age and maturity are very likely to affect their level of academic stress. This corroborates the assertion of Rajasekar in Dimitrov (2017) that the transition from a lower class (determined by age) to a higher class is fairly academically stressful. However, the narrative is different to Chacón-Cuberos et al. (2019) when they discovered that there exists negative relationship between age and academic stress of students.

On gender, Persaud and Persaud (2016) pointed out that it is a common knowledge that female students are prone to greater stress than their male counterparts. They further argued that for the female students, they may experience more stress in the area of anxiety while the male students may experience more stress in the area of finance in school. But to Dyson and Renk (2006), regardless of gender, students have the same stress levels in relation to family life issues and movement from one class to the other. From the reviewed literature, it is likely that certain demographic variables like age, gender and class could influence academic stress of students in secondary schools.

Moreover, on the relationship between social media use and perceived academic stress of secondary school students, it must be noted that social media has become a major technologically trend in this dispensation and virtually all young adults engaged in the use of one form of social media or the other. It is therefore pertinent to consider if the use of social media could influence students’ academic stress. Sriwilai and Charoensukmongkol (2016) affirmed that students who are social media addicts tended to have lower mindfulness level and use emotion focused coping to battle with stress. Moreover, Kross et al. (2013) conducted a research investigating people’s Facebook usage and how susceptible they are to the feelings of life issues and found out that the more students use Facebook, the more their life satisfaction level reduces resulting to depression. Hughes (2018) who conducted a study on the effect of social media on depression, anxiety and stress, found that using a high number of social media platforms, for example Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter can affect all three negative emotional states examined, depression anxiety and stress. Moreover, Fodeman and Monroe in Ogundijo (2014) noted that usage of social media like Facebook has increased the anxiety level of secondary school students which eventually causes stress. The study of Aydogan and Buyukyilmaz (2017) on the effect of students’ use of social media on their stress and anxiety level showed that it is the frequency and duration of social media use that is likely to cause an increase in the stress and anxiety levels of the students. Thus, literature provides evidences of the relationship between use of social media and stress level of secondary school students.

3. Methodology

3.1 Participants

The population for the study consisted of students at ISCED level 3 i.e. senior secondary school 1 and 2. Those in class 3 were excluded from the study because they were not available in school during the period of data collection due to their ongoing Senior School Certificate Examination (SSCE). Therefore, the target population of the study is 1,107 students across S.S.S 1 and S.S.S 2 in the three disciplines (Sciences, Arts and Commercial) of Aquinas College, Akure.

In order to ascertain the suitable sample size given the target population of 1,107 secondary school students, the study adopted the Israel (2003) model for determining sample size which affirms that for a known population, a precision level of either ±3%, ±5%, ±7% or ±10%, and a confidence level of 95%, a sample size can be estimated. This model is implemented for this study as seen in Table 1 below:

Table 1.

Sample size for ±3%, ±5%, ±7% and ±10% Precision Levels Where Confidence Level is 95% and P=.5.

From Table 1 above, where ±5% was taken for precision at 95% confidence level when the population is 1,000 (closest to the study’s population of 1,107), the sample should be 286. Therefore, a total number of 286 secondary school students participated in the study.

4. Results

4.1 Answering Research question

The results for the study are presented below in accordance with the research questions raised and hypothesis generated to guide the study:

4.1.1 Demographic characteristics of the secondary school students

Table 1 revealed that most of the secondary school students 124 (64.6%) were between the ages of 15-17, while the least 2 (1.0%) were above 20 years old. Students from the Science department 81 (42.2%) participated in the study more than the others with those in Commercial department 52 (27.1%) being the least. Findings also showed that a significant number of the secondary school students 101 (52.6%) were in SS2 and the rest 91 (47.4%) were in SS1.

4.1.2 Social media use by the secondary school students

This section will contain the frequency of use and purpose of use of social media by the secondary school students.

(1) Frequency of use

Table 2 presented results on the frequency of use of social media platforms by the respondents. Findings showed that most of the students 141 (73.4%) noted that they used Facebook on a daily basis. This was followed by Messenger as the students 101 (52.6%) were of the view that they made use of it daily. On the other hand, over four-fifths of the students 158 (82.3%) never used Flickr and 157 (81.8%) also never used LinkedIn. With a calculated average mean of 2.6 and criterion mean value of 2.5, the frequency of social media use by secondary school students is seen to be high.

Table 2.

Demographic characteristic of respondents

(2) Purposes of use

Table 3 revealed that the most prominent reason why the secondary school students used the social media was to meet friends (X =3.55). This was followed by; chatting with friends (X =3.45); downloading music (X =3.11); downloading pictures (X =3.09) and for the purposes of engaging in group discussion (X =2.98).

Table 3.

Frequency of use of social media by secondary school students

Table 4.

Purpose of use of social media by secondary school students

4.1.3 Level of perceived academic stress of secondary school students

In order to determine the level of perceived academic stress of the students, a test of norm was conducted. The scale between 0-23 shows that the level of perceived academic stress is low, the scale between “24-48” connotes that the level of perceived academic stress is moderate and the scale between “49-72” indicates that the level of perceived academic stress is high. Thus, the overall mean for perceived academic stress 42.86 which fall between the scale “24-48.” Therefore, it could be deduced that the level of perceived academic stress of the secondary school students is moderate (Table 5).

Table 5.

Perceived academic stress of secondary school student

4.2 Test of hypotheses

• Ho1: There is no significant relationship between demographics and perceived academic stress of the secondary school students

In order to establish the relationship between each demographic variable and perceived academic stress, correlation matrix table is presented (Table 6). There is a positive relationship between age and perceived academic stress. Though not significant (r=.090; N=192; p<0.05). This implies that as the age of the students’ increases, there are tendencies that their level of perceived academic stress might also increase. Thus, the null hypothesis is accepted. There is a positive relationship between department and perceived academic stress, though not significant (r=-.140; N=192; p<0.05). Thus, the department of the students could present academic stress in some instances, while in others it might not. As a result, the null hypothesis is accepted. There is a significant positive relationship between class and perceived academic stress (r=.144*; N=192; p<0.05). This indicates that as the students move up to the next class; their perceived academic stress also increases. Thus, the null hypothesis is rejected.

Table 6.

Correlation matrix showing the relationship between each demographic factor and perceived academic stress of secondary school students

• Ho2: There is no significant relationship between social media use and perceived academic stress of secondary school students

Table 7 presented the results of the correlation analysis and findings showed that there is a negative relationship between social media use and perceived academic stress of secondary school students (r= -.136; df = 191; p < 0.05). This implies that the more the secondary students use the social media, the less their level of perceived academic stress. Thus, the null hypothesis is accepted.

Table 7.

Relationship between social media use and perceived academic stress by secondary school students

• Ho3: Demographics and social media use will have no joint influence of perceived academic stress of secondary school students

Table 8 showed the joint contribution of demographics and social media use to the prediction of perceived academic stress. The table showed a coefficient of multiple correlation (R=.256 and a multiple R² of .066). This means that 6.6% of the variance was accounted for by the two predictor variables when taken together. The significant of the composite contribution was tested at P<.05. The table also showed that the analysis of variance for the regression yielded F-ratio of 3.286 (P<0.05). This implies that the joint contribution of the independent variables to the dependent variable was significant and the other variables not included in this model may have accounted for the remaining variance. Thus, the null hypothesis is rejected.

Table 8.

Joint contribution of demographics and social media use to perceived academic stress of secondary school students

• Ho4: The relative contribution of demographics and social media use to perceived academic stress of secondary school students

Table 9 reveals the relative contribution of the two independent variables to the dependent variable. The relative contribution is expressed as beta weights, demographics; age (β = .089, P< .05) department (β = .081, P< .05) and class (β =.189, P<.05); and social media use (β =-.141, P<.05) Hence out of the independent variables of age, department, class and social media use, only class (one of the demographics) that significantly predicts perceived academic stress of secondary school students.

Table 9.

Multiple regression analysis showing the relative contribution of demographics and social media use to perceived academic stress of secondary school students

5. Discussion

The study revealed that majority of the students in class 1 and 2 of ISCED level 3 are between the age range of 15-17 years as indicated by 124 (64.5%) of the respondents. Also, majority of the students constituting 81 (42.2%) were in science discipline while 101 (52.6%) of them are in class 2.

On the frequency of use of social media platforms, the study revealed that majority of the student respondents regularly visited the various social media platforms. For instance, 141 (73.4%) respondents visit Facebook on a daily basis, 101 (52.6%), 79 (41.1%), 50 (26.0%) of the students studied visited messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram respectively on a daily basis. The implication of this finding is that secondary school students use social media sites that are very interactive and capable of connecting them to new people as it is Facebook, messenger and WhatsApp.

As pertains to purposes of use, the study found that most of the respondents use the social media tools to meet friends (116/60.4%), chat with friends (106/55.2%), read for examinations (61/31.8%) submit assignments (37/19.3%) and ask questions from teachers (29/15.1%). This study is in agreement with Mingle and Adams (2015) when they investigated social media network participation in senior high schools in Ghana. Their findings revealed that most of the respondents constituting 41.4% noted that they use social media networks for making friends, and this is followed by those who indicated their purpose for using social media networks was for chatting, constituting 30.5% of the respondents. However, this finding contradicts the submission of Omekwu (2019) when he noted that social media platforms provide numerous and flexible pedestals for educational activities such as class scheduling, examination information and information sharing among stakeholders. It can be inferred therefore that while secondary school students are expected to use social media for educative or academic purposes, majority of them utilizes these networks for social purposes like meeting new friends and chatting with them.

The study also showed that the level of perceived academic stress of secondary school students investigated was found to be moderate. This is hinged on outcome of the overall mean for perceive academic stress pegged at 42.86. This particular finding corresponds with that of Ebrahim (2016) when he found out that the respondents on the average, had moderate levels of perceived academic stress; and only 12% of the sample reported a high level of stress. Moreover, the study revealed that of all demographics considered for the study (age, department and class), had a positive correlation with perceived academic stress of the students, although of such positive correlation, only class of the respondents was found to be have a significant positive relationship. This seem to tally with Persaud and Persaud (2016) who investigated the relationship between socio-demographics and stress levels, stressors, and coping mechanisms found that demographic variables like enrolment-status, age and GPA had significant influence on the stress level of students. It can be infer from the findings of this study that the higher secondary school students go in the class, the more they seem to experience academic stress. This tally with Rajasekar (2013) who noted that academic stress of students increased when they move to a higher class. By implication, that other factors peculiar to the class level of students could account for the academic stress level of the students.

The study further showed that there is a negative relationship between social media use and perceived academic stress of secondary school students, which is not significant. Therefore, use of social media would help to reduce the academic stress level of the students. This could be accounted for by the fact that the students use social media platforms for social purposes which could help then unwind or ease off stress accrued by academic activities. This finding correlates the study of Tompoulidis (2015) on examining students’ Facebook utilization for stress relieve. The study posited that secondary school students actively use Facebook to vent personal issues and seek support from friends and family members when they are stressed academically due to overwhelming assignments and exams. As such, Facebook serves as a platform for the students to relieve their academic stress as such enabling them regain relaxation and academic focus. According to Rithika and Selvaraj (2013), use of social media platforms or the number of friends that secondary school students have on social media platforms does not automatically lead to academic stress. The authors asserted that what leads to stress is the use of social media to increase awareness of stress events in the life of such students, concluding that the relationship between social media use and stress is indirect. By implication, it’s not the use of social media that causes stress but the stress related activities that social media platforms are used for.

In addition, the study revealed that when combined, demographics and use of social media will significantly influenced the perceived academic stress of secondary school students. However, then considered relatively, only class, which is one of the demographics, significantly predicts perceived academic stress. It invariably implies that there are other factors that could account for the moderate level of stress perceived by secondary school students. The research of Bedewy and Gabriel (2015) suggests pressure to perform, perceptions of workload, academic self-perception and time restraints as some factors capable of causing academic stress in students. Ghatol (2017) also asserted some causes of stress among secondary school students to include disturbed family dynamics, peer pressure, inability to cope with studies, drug abuse, lack of competence and need for instant gratification of needs.

6. Conclusion

Academic stress is moderately perceived by secondary school students and this stress does not directly result from their use of social media platforms. Though the use of social media among secondary school students is revealed to be high, such use does not directly arouse academic stress. On the contrary, proper and moderated use of social media by secondary school students could be a tool for them to unwind and be socially relevant. It is when students engage in social media platforms to participate in stressful activities that they become stressed academically. The demographic characteristics of secondary school students like age and course of study / discipline predicts academic stress significantly. However, class when considered in isolation could increase academic stress of students. This seems to suggest that when students move from one class to a higher one, there are tendencies of increased academic stress. This could be a result of increased workload, increase expectation from the student, among other things.

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