Vol. 2 No. 1 (2023): Influence of social media utilization and parent adolescent communication on academic- achievement of secondary school students in south Ethiopia

Abstract

This study aimed to assess the influence of social media utilization and parentadolescent communication on academic achievement at Hodo Public Secondary School. The basic research questions formulated for the study were: 1. Is the intensity of social media utilization and parent-adolescent communication predicting academic achievement among study participants? 2. What is the extent of social media utilization and parent-adolescent communication among the study participants?; and 3. Is there a gender difference in terms of social media utilization? The cross-sectional design was applied to achieve its objectives. Both stratified random sampling and simple random sampling techniques were used. 253 participants were selected, including ten percent contingency, from a total of 487 students. Nine teachers were randomly selected for interviews; both the primary and secondary data were collected. The quantitative data was analyzed by descriptive (mean, standard deviation, percentage) and inferential statistics (linear regression, sample, and independent t-test) using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) Version 20.0. Also, the process of analyzing qualitative data began with coding, classifying, and categorizing the obtained text data from interviewees through note-taking and tape recording into concepts or codes. The findings of this study revealed that the intensity of social media utilization and parent-adolescent communication have a statistically significant influence on academic achievement (=.001, F (2,216) =.101, p =.034). The extent of social media utilization and parent-adolescent communication was 95%CI: social media utilization (M = 1.90, SD = 2.63), t (219) =1.498, p =.046, and parent-adolescent communication (M = 2.57, SD = 3.50), t (219) =1.736, p =.012, which implied that there is a statistically significant difference in the extent of social media utilization and parent-adolescent communication among study participants, and there was no statistically significant difference between the mean score of social media utilization among male (M = 65.97, SD = 3.950, n = 152) and female (M = 65.97, SD = 3.950, t(67) = 1.576, p =.049) at the.05 significant level. This implies that the finding shows that there is a significant influence of social media utilization and parent-adolescent communication on the academic achievement of secondary school students. This indicates that parents or guardians, teachers, counselors, or concerned school personnel and the government should take part in designing an awareness-creation program to utilize social media and boost academic achievements.