MEDIA LITERACY SKILLS AND INTERNET USE AMONG PRIVATE SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN IBADAN NORTH LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA, OYO STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

The study was embarked upon to examine the relationship between media literacy skills and internet use among private secondary school students in Ibadan North LGA, Oyo state, Nigeria. The population of this study comprises of 1,689 senior secondary school two students. Multistage sampling procedure was adopted in selecting the study sample. At the first stage, a simple random sampling techniques was used in selecting 30% of the private secondary schools in Ibadan North LGA, Oyo State, Nigeria. This amounted to 17 Schools. At the second stage, a probability proportionate to size method was used to select 50% of SSS2 students in selected private secondary schools. This gave a total of 313 respondents. Descriptive statistics of mean, standard deviation, frequency count and percentage were used to answer research questions 1 and 2, while Pearson product moment correlation (PPMC) was used to test the hypothesis posed in the study. The findings revealed that Private secondary school students in Ibadan North LGA utilised facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google Docs, search engines and News sites as Internet tools being regularly used on a daily basis. The major purposes of Internet tools used by the students were for surfing to do assignments, playing games, sending e-mails to friends, downloading learning resources to do assignments, surfing for studying, reading newspaper, reading sport information, listening to music and seeing videos, shopping, use for social media and reading books online. There was high level of media literacy skills among private secondary school students in Ibadan North LGA, Oyo state, Nigeria. There was a significant positive relationship between media literacy skills and internet use among the students. It was recommended that school management should explore media literacy skills as a way of improving ethical use of Internet use among the students.