Social Media and Undergraduate Students’ Self-Motivation in the Faculty of Education, University of Port Harcourt Rivers State Nigeria

The importance of emotional intelligence cannot be overemphasized. An emotionally intelligent individual is self-motivated and has the ability to manage human resources and situations. Previous studies have shown that social media has an influence on the emotional intelligence of students. This study is aimed at seeing what influence social media, WhatsApp in particular, has on the self-motivational aspect of emotional intelligence of 400-level undergraduate students in seven departments in the Faculty of Education, University of Port Harcourt. The sample size was 314 undergraduate students registered as 400-level students during the 2019/2020 session. Two instruments were used for data collection namely WhatsApp Usage Questionnaire (WUQ) designed by the authors and an adapted form of the Emotional Intelligence Scale (EIS) developed by Mehta and Singh (2013). The reliability of the WUQ was determined using test-retest method and a coefficient of 0.83 was obtained after correlating the test and retest scores using Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC). The face and content validity of the instrument was also established. Findings from the study showed that WhatsApp as a social media app significantly influenced the self-motivation of undergraduate students across the seven departments in the Faculty of Education. The post hoc test revealed that the difference One of the recommendations given based on the findings is that higher education instructors should utilize WhatsApp actively for classroom teaching incorporating activities that would motivate students to learn and perform better.