Glitches on social media exposure: The experience of the public elementary pupils of Mocag, Baggao

The influence of social media in adolescents and teenagers is of particular importance, not only because this particular group of children are developing mentally vulnerable but also because they are among the heaviest users of social networking. Parallel to this, there has also been considerable media coverage of the growth of social media usage, and the potential positive outcomes and concerns about the way some individuals are engaging with it. Social media sites offer new and varied ways to communicate via internet. They allow people to easily create their own online page and profile to construct and display an online network of contacts. Social media has become a way for people to communicate in society and build relationship with others. This study is designed to find out the glitches experienced on Social Media exposure of the public elementary pupils in Mocag Elementary School. This study made used of the descriptive-correlational design. The media exposure of the students also correlated to their profile variables. The respondents of the study were the 40 grades 4 to 6 elementary pupils of Mocag Elementary School who have access to social media. Total enumeration was used for the pupils who have access to social media. In gathering the data needed, the questionnaire-checklist was used. The questionnaire was adopted from the study of Peter (2015), however it was modified to suit the research study. The questionnaire consisted of three parts. Part I, contained the profile of the respondents in terms of age, gender, parent's highest educational attainment, parent's occupation and social media gadgets at home. Part II, contained statements that focused on the social media exposure such as social media resources, social networking sites used, number of hours spend by respondents on social networking. For the profile of the respondents, the frequency count and percentage were used. The weighted mean was computed to determine the mean score of the student-respondents’ time spent for social networking with the following mean range. Descriptive statistics such as frequency counts and percentages were used in analyzing demographic variables of the respondents while the interferential statistics like Chi-square (x) was used to test the stated hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. Based from the result, the researcher concludes that in today's generation, young learners are exposed to the use of social media. Facebook is the most social media the respondents are exposed to. Through social media they can do socialization, online collaborative learning and a way for people to communicate in society and build relationship with others. The pupils of Mocag Elementary School of Baggao South District particularly Grades IV, V and VI were not highly addicted to social media since most of them spent 1 to 60 minutes online with overall mean of exposure of 37.67 minutes only.