Effects of Blackberry Messenger Usage on the Academic Activities of Agriculture Students in University Of Portharcourt

Abstract

This study identified the effects of blackberry messenger usage on academic activities of agriculture students in the University of Port Harcourt. Eighty agriculture students were selected for the study using simple random sampling technique. Data was collected using Structured questionnaire and analyzed using descriptive statistics namely frequency, percentages and mean. The result shows that 59% were females and 78.2% fall between the age brackets of 21-30 years. Other social media used by the students include 2go (55.1%), blackberry messenger (100%), Facebook (89.7%), Skype (84.6%), Whatsapp (59.0%), Twitter (33.3%), LinkedIn (6.4%), Youtube (20.5%) and Google + (26.5%). About 94.9% has access to internet through their blackberry device, 43.6% go online through their blackberry device very often while 30.8% spend 2-5 hours on blackberry messenger on daily basis. The major activity performed by the agriculture students with their blackberry device is educational activities (44.9%) while the major effects of blackberry messenger usage on academic activities of agriculture students were; it facilitates their research work (x = 3.4), facilitates networking with other agricultural students (x = 3.2), distracts them from carrying out academic assignments (X =2.5), constitutes distraction to private studies (X =2.6) and participation during lectures (X = 2.5) It was recommended that excessive usage of blackberry messenger for recreational activities should be discouraged among students