The Social Media Use and the Study Habits of Millennials

ABSTRACT: Social media use and social networking poured internationally in the present that no academic institutions could stop its impact on education. Researches were conducted on the impact of these technologies and its effectivity to certain school conditions. Hence, this study aimed at describing the extent of the usage of social media as a vehicle to the improvement of study habits of the Carolinians especially to the stratified proportionate and randomly chosen 50 Grade Ten students of the University of San Carlos, Basic Education Department – South Campus in Cebu City, Philippines. Descriptive survey research using simple percentage, mean and standard deviation was done using an adapted survey questionnaire which was tested for face and content validity. To obtain reliability, the tool was pilot tested and was proven to be reliable (α = 0.891) using Cronbach‘s Alpha. Based on the gathered data, students spent most of their time in social networking sites whether on a typical day (28%) or weekend (46%) and they usually do this inside their bedroom (46%) or in an internet café (54%) outside. They usually use their mobile phones (76%) to visit social sites and the majority (34%) received less parental support. In terms of the students‘ level of study habit, it was rated average ( x = 3.32, SD = 0.33). This means that the use of social media does not give a negative influence on the study habits of the students in this study. Even if most of them utilized whatever available technology they have such as their mobile phones and they spend most of their time on internet cafés, it was recommended that parental involvement and teachers‘ wise use of technology, pedagogy, and content should be strengthened for these partners still play a significant role in achieving success both in instruction and education.
KEYWORDS: Descriptive statistics, millennials, study habits, social media