Social Media Networks and Their Impact on University Students’ Academic Performance: A Case of Kibabii University, Kenya

Improvements in communication technology especially in social media has greatly broadened the scope of communication helping people to be better informed and keeping abreast with world development. The social networking sites among others include: WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook and Skype which use gadgets like smart phones and tablets. The popularity of use of social media has been felt in learning institutions. Certainly, this creates a direct link between the use of social media and academic achievement in learning institutions. These sites remain in use continuously by students on a daily basis. Therefore, as to whether many social networking sites displayed on the internet cause students to be tempted to abandon their academic work and reading times in preference for chatting online with friends or they enhance academic performance is a question that this paper has attempted to answer. Consequently, this paper aims at discussing the impact of social media networks in terms of promoting or negating academic performance among university students. At the end of the paper, the author has recommended on how learning institutions can maximumly benefit there students from the exposure to social media to enhance academic performance