Students' perception toward the effects of social networking sites on academic performance: Faculty of Communication and Media Studies, EMU

The Internet has gone through rapid enhancement, with the compelling importance of socializing as well as the mechanism of communication concepts. Social media could be referred to as a platform of interaction with people where which they create, exchange and share variable information and ideas in effective networks and communities. In this research, the purpose of this investigation is the students‟ perception using of social networks (SN) on their academic performance. The research is also aimed to evaluate the negative and positive effects of such sites on students‟ academic performance. In this research, a total 70 questionnaires were prepared which is composed of two parts: Part 1 contains personal data of the participants such as age, gender, grade and whether they have registered any online class before or not. In addition, Part 2 contains questions on the subject of the students‟ perception regarding to the impact of social networking sites in education and shared with the faculty of Communication and Media Studies‟ students of Eastern Mediterranean University. After collecting data, SPSS Software was used for the analysis, i.e. Mean, standard deviation, one-way ANOVA, and t-test to show the interrelationship between variables. The study showed that most of the students engage in the use of social networking sites primarily for socialization activities rather than for academic purposes. However, most of the students think that social networking sites have more positive impact on their academic performance. The research also explores the significant relationship between grades, age, gender, and the effects on the negative and positive concepts of SNS on student‟s overall academic performance. Therefore, there is a significant relationship between the age and gender of students, but also the positive and negative effects on their academic perceptions with social networks. Keywords: Social Networking, Social Media, Academic Performance, Perception