Perceived effects of social media usage on development of undergraduate students in Punjab, Pakistan

This study aimed to assess the impacts of social media gadgets on academic performance of the students. The study was conducted in two randomly selected universities in Punjab, i.e., University of Agriculture Faisalabad and University of Sargodha. The sample size for the study was 200 (100 from each university) purposively selected undergraduate students enrolled in B.Sc. (Hons.) Agriculture. Data was collected through the valid, pre-tested and structured questionnaire and analyzed through SPSS. Descriptive statistics was applied for the meaningful interpretation of the results. The results of the study showed that average age of the respondents was 21.09 years. Of the total respondents, 59.8% belonged to rural areas and 40.5% belonged to urban areas. Less than half (46%) of respondents were small farmers and 13.5% had no land. Most of the respondents (76.3%) were owners of their lands. Farming was the key income source for 58% respondents. Average area under cultivation was perceived 10.61 acres. Regarding use of social media gadgets, 87.5% of respondents had an account on WhatsApp for contacts and information sharing thus WhatsApp was the widely used gadget (x=3.42±1.30). Pertaining to use of social media gadgets, improved students’ confidence (x=3.28), developing high quality multimedia products such as presentations (x=3.27), enhanced opportunity of discussion (x=3.26), enforcement and encouragement to independent learning (x=3.19) were the leading impacts as perceived by the respondents on their academic performance. This study affirms the overwhelmed effectiveness of social media and urged universities to develop a framework to integrate social media in educational system.