Influence of Social Media Usage on Self-Esteem of Teacher Trainees at the University of Benin, Edo State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study evaluated the influence of social media usage on self-esteem of teacher trainees in various teacher education programmes in the University of Benin, Edo State, Nigeria. A descriptive survey of ex-post facto design was employed. The population consists of all the 8665 undergraduate students that spread across the eight departments in the Faculty of Education in the University of Benin. A sample size of 866 (representing 10 percent proportionate sample across the eight departments) was drawn using the proportionate random sampling technique. Two instruments namely: “Social Media Usage Questionnaire” and “Self-esteem Scale for Youths” were used to measure social media usage and self-esteem respectively. The test-retest method was used to determine the reliability of the instrument. The result of the r-coefficient yielded 0.82 and 0.72 respectively. The simple linear regression analysis was used to test the three formulated hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The result showed that social media visit frequency had direct impact on self-esteem. Furthermore, the time spent on social media as well as the number of social media membership had significant influence on the students’ self-esteem. It was recommended that Information and orientation services of school guidance counsellors be arranged at the institutional, faculty and departmental levels to make students come to terms with the potential harm of using multiple social media handles with the risk of data privacy exposures that could be harmful to their personality or self-image.