Social Media Utilization And Students’ Academic Performance
[A CASE STDUY OF ALIMOSHO LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA, LAGOS STATE]

1.6     Significance of the Study                             Internet has become the centre of communication and Social Networking Sites has become an unavoidable part of adolescent lifestyle majority of who are in secondary schools. SNS affects internal and external growth of adolescents. Consequently, this study will help school administrators, parents, teachers and students. This study will help school teachers to know the influence that social media have on their students. It would help parents, guardians, school administrators and teachers to create awareness and enlighten the students on the negative and positive influences SNS has on them and their future career.
    It is no more a gainsaying that many young boys and girls in secondary schools sleep less surfing through the social networking sites at night, the development which invariably deteriorates their health condition. Thus, the study will help parents, teachers, counsellors, and medical practitioners to help the students well on how to manage health in pursuit of academic excellence. It will be relevant in assisting students in understanding the diversity of social media and the ills. It will provide relevance material for students and other researchers undertaking similar research. The study will help researchers with more information on the influence of social media on students’ academic performance.
Works on this subject matter are growing, one of the recent works the researcher came by is Osharive (2015) on Social Media and Academic Performance of Students in University of Lagos being a B.A. (ed) project submitted to the Department of Educational Administration, Faculty of Education, University of Lagos, which focuses on the institution. The current research focuses on students in the formative age so as to keep them on track of their goal without deviation. Students at this age are still bendable and correctable unlike those in higher education. The work is equally significant because it covers an area with the largest population size in Lagos State, even higher than the population of some states of the federation.  
1.7     Scope of the Study
    The research is limited to the study of the relationship between the social media and students’ academic performance in Alimosho Local Government Area of Lagos State. The focus of this work is to primarily study the influence of social media on the academic performance of students.
1.8     Operational Definition of Terms
    As words may mean differently in different contexts, the following definitions are given as the words used as intended to be understood for the purpose of this study.
Social Media: According to wikipaedia, the free encyclopaedia, social media is a web and mobile based technology that supports interactive dialogue and produces substantial and pervasive changes to communication between organizations, communities and individuals. In essence, users generate and share all types of contents within their established networks; social media in this sense refers to facebook, Youtube, Whatsapp, 2go, Blogs, Twitters, BBM, Myspace, LinkedIn and so on.  They are forms of electronic communication which facilitate interactive base on certain interests.
 Social Networking Sites (SNS): A website where people put information about them and can send to others.
Social Networking: The use of internet to make information about yourself available to other people especially people you share an interest with to send messages to them.
Media: Are all those media technologies that are intended to reach a large audience by mass communication. “They are messages communicated through a mass medium to a number of people.
Students Academic Performance: This will be measured using five years senior school certificate examination (SSCE) results between years 2010-2015 in Alimosho LGA Secondary Schools.