Influence of Technology on the Social and Emotional Development of Primary School Children in Anambra State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study investigated influence of technology on the social and emotional development of primary school children in Anambra State, Nigeria. Descriptive survey design was adopted for the study. The study answered two research questions while two null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. The population of the study comprised 4,043 respondents in the 327 public primary schools in Anambra State. It comprised of 327 head teachers: 2,115 teachers and 1,601 parents. The sample size was 1,213 respondents. It comprised of 98 head teachers, 635 teachers and 480 parents of school children from 98 public primary schools in the six Education Zones in Anambra State. A researcher developed questionnaire titled ‘Technology, Social and Emotional Development of Children Questionnaire (TSEDCQ)’ was used for data collection. The instrument was validated by three experts, one from the Measurement and Evaluation Unit of Department of Educational Foundations, and two from Early Childhood and Primary Education Department. Cronbach alpha was applied in determining the internal consistency of the instrument with reliability coefficients of the two clusters being; 0.85 and 0.92 respectively. The researcher with the help of five research assistants collected data for the study. The Mean was adopted in answering the research questions while analysis of variance (ANOVA) was deployed in testing the null hypotheses It revealed that technology has both positive and negative influence on the social and emotional development of public primary school children in the state. The study further found that the perception of school heads, teachers and parents did not differ significantly on the extent of influence of technology on the social and emotional development of public primary school children in Anambra StateThe study concluded that the influence is understood to be both positive and negative. It was recommended that school heads, teachers and parents should endeavour to pay more attention to the kind of technological gadgets and experience that primary school children are exposed to, so as to channel the children’s attention to technologies that would positively impact them more appreciably.