Social media addiction has been linked to increased stress, anxiety, and depression, with detrimental effects on the learning process. Students who are distracted by social media may struggle to stay engaged in class, miss important information or assignments, and experience decreased academic performance as a result.
However, social media has many positive effects on education including better communication, timely information, and socializing online, etc. But at the same time, it has some negative effects which include identity theft, cyberbullying and social isolation.
The usage of social media during class creates reckless manner of distraction from learning process with a negative effect to complete tasks and improving academic performance (Flanigan & Boychuk 2015).
Students also perceive social media as a distraction in many contexts. Students who spend too much time on social media may struggle with time management and become less productive in the classroom. Students are easily distracted from their studies by constant alerts, endless scrolling feeds, and the appeal of viral material.
A study conducted in Addis Ababa public preparatory schools revealed that majority of the participants (students) spent 1-2 hours on social media per day; and least for the purpose of social media usage was to gain academic knowledge. This study further stated that there is a significant difference between males and females in level of usage of social media per day. However, the study indicated that there is no significant difference on age. Moreover, this research indicated that there was no difference on grade level in frequency of usage of social media per day (Masoro, 2019).
In this regard, the study pinpointed that there is a strong need to direct priority to the effort that needs to be done in increasing the awareness of parents and teachers on how to help students engage themselves in productive media interactions and communications (Ibid).
Over the recent 5 years, there has been tremendous changes in educational policy of Ethiopia. This policy changes in education sector is said to be wide-rage aimed to transform educational quality holistically.
However, it's worth mentioning that in the last three years there has been serious decline for students performance on the university entrance examination (grade 12th).
Despite there can be various factors linked with this serious decline on students achievement, I do believe that the core hampering bottlenecks are as follows, but not limited to:
1. Social media: modern technology in general and use of social media in particular is considered to have significant impact on students academic performance globally. While modern technology can be source of advantages for students academic progress, it has it's negative impact vise versa. Many students may fall addictive for social media use. Therefore, they spend more than 8-9 hours on social media: Tiktok, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Telegram.
2. Education Policy Change Effect: change of curriculum, assessment methods, and policy frameworks on the education system can have it's own negative influence on education. It takes time to adjust that change. Hence, changes made in education system of the country can be associated the poor achievement of the students.
3. Lack of willingness to heed community say during educational roadmap setup: In Ethiopia, community are not involved in educational policy development. On the contrary, one of the most acknowledged pillars of educational quality is how it based on demand of the community intended to access.
Keeping that in mind, the opposite exists in Ethiopia. Education policy is always framed on the bases of regime interest. Notably, another fact is that each regime put on trash educational policy of it's predecessor. This is a political culture practiced in Ethiopia that causes discontinuity on policy strategy initiated by the predecessor's regime.
Corresponding author: Soane Badel | Lecturer at Jigjiga University | Department of Special Needs and Inclusive Education.
