Determinant Factors of Access to the Internet among in-School Adolescents in Imo State, South-East, Nigeria

Abstract

There are concerns from several quotas about the dangers of allowing young people especially adolescents have access to the internet. Many vices have been linked to young people's access to the internet; some of them include cyber bullying, internet pornography, poor reading habits, internet addiction etc. The study therefore set out to find out how the socio-economic status and beliefs of parents affect their in-school adolescents' access to the internet. The mixed method approach was adopted to achieve the objectives of the study. Questionnaire and Focus Group Discussion (FGD) were used to gather quantitative and qualitative data respectively. While 500 copies of the questionnaire were administered to respondents, 493 copies were retrieved and valid for the study. Six FGD sessions took place. Multi-stage, simple random and systematic sampling techniques were used for the selection of the respondents for the quantitative method. This was because the population of the study cut across the three educational zones of the state and classes. Purposive sampling technique was employed to select participants in the Focus Group Discussion (FGD). This technique was used to select members for the study based on their relevance to the study. The study was anchored on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). Findings show that socioeconomic status affect adolescents' access to the internet while parental beliefs affect their freedom of use. Findings also show that in-school adolescents in Imo State to a very large extent have access to the internet despite the fears of their parents. Based on these findings, the researchers recommended that parents use both technical and physical strategies to monitor what their adolescent children do on the internet since it is obvious that the internet has great potentials and has come to stay and cannot be stopped.