Influence of Social Media on Reading Habits among Year 5 Pupils

Abstract

Social media is an online platform which allows individuals and groups, as well as pupils to collaborate with each other. However, studies shown that pupils used them more for leisure than for academic purposes, including cultivating bad reading habits. This study aimed to explore the influence of social media towards reading habits and interest in reading among year 5 pupils in an urban school. The researchers see a need to carry out this study as it provides an insight for educators, especially for primary education teachers, who are longing for different pedagogical approach in language teaching, specifically the teaching of reading. A survey was carried out with 50 year 5 ESL pupils by using a questionnaire comprising 50 close-ended and 1 open-ended items to identify the influence of social media on their reading habits. Besides, unstructured interviews were conducted with 10 of the respondents to examine the influence of social media on interest of reading. The findings showed positive reading habits are able to construct by using social media as it successfully increased the interest of pupils in reading. In conclusion, the use of social media is effective in cultivating positive reading habits. The results of this study may be beneficial to educators in adapting the use of social media in teaching reading. It is suggested that further studies could be done to identify the social media platform that contributes towards pupils’ better reading habits.