Technological Addictions Among Secondary School Adolescents and Social Relationship

This study adopted a cross sectional research method. This method is considered suitable as data obtained from a sampling group relationship is identified and generalized back to the population. The population of this study consisted of the 21,682 SS2 students in public and private schools in Owerri Municipal, Council Imo State. The sample for this study comprised of 300 students (50 each), drawn from 3 private schools and three 3 public schools within the population. Purposive sampling technique was used to draw the schools while random sampling technique was used to select the students for the study. The instruments for data collection include: Internet Addictions Questionnaire by Kimberly Young, Social Media Disorder Scale by Kimberly Young, Researcher designed Digital Game Addiction Scale and Social Behaviour Scale. The reliability of the Internet Addictions Questionnaire and Social Media Disorder Scale was 0.73 and 0.68 respectively. The reliability of the Digital Game Addition a social behavior were 0.76 and 0.83 respectively. The instruments were validated by two experts in Measurement and Evaluation and three in Educational Psychology who certified the instruments fit for administration. The data obtained were tested at 0.05 level of significance using Linear Regression and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) using SPSS 16.0. The main findings of the study were that IA, SMA and DGA have significant relationship with social behavior of the subjects. The study recommends as follows: that teachers and must as a necessity mount serious surveillance on students’ use of modern technologies with a view to saving them from technological addictions; there should regular talks in schools on the danger of excessive use of the internet, social media, digital games, smart phones among others.