The Impact of Social Media on Student Academic Life in Higher Education

Abstract

Social media is rapidly changing the communication setting of today's social world. The emergent of social media is significantly influencing the academic life of students. Institutions and academician are continually trying with social media technologies hoping to excite critical thinking skills, collaboration, and knowledge construction. Today social media has been accepted by higher institution making it a platform where students connect with their instructors, fellow students and other higher authorities across the board. This therefore called for the study to explore and examine how social media has impacted on students' academic life. The study implored a qualitative approach in assessing these impacts. Ten (10) participants were conveniently sampled and interviewed with a period of two weeks. After studying the phenomena that were of interest to the study, and transcribing the various responses of the participants the results reveals that social media is widely used by students of higher institution and that participant are in support of the idea that social media contribute a significant quota to the development of their academic life.