Social media utilization and climate change awareness among senior high school students in Magsaysay National High School, Occidental Mindoro, Philippines

The study aims to assess the social media utilization of the Senior High School (SHS) students of Magsaysay National High School (MNHS) and their climate change awareness. The study utilized descriptive survey design. The 309 respondents were the randomly from the officially enrolled SHS students for AY 2023-2024. Moreover, the weighted mean, frequency and Pearson Correlation are used to analyze the gathered data. Results of the study revealed that majority of the respondents were female, who belongs to a medium size family with a household income below poverty threshold in the province. As per social media utilization, they owned at least two gadgets, they have three social media accounts, spent an average of 8.62 hours a day browsing the different social media, but only spent 0.10 hours a day in learning climate change in the different social networking sites. Further, they have “moderate” level of awareness on climate change in terms of association of disasters, perceived cause, manifestation, and ways to mitigate it. Lastly, there is no significant relationship between social media utilization and climate change awareness of the SHS students in MNHS. However, the study recommends to raise awareness and promote positive attitude about climate change in early childhood education and at home, intensify environmental education in the K to 12 curriculum, utilization of social media as a source of relevant information on climate change, and conduct of additional study on the other socio-economic variables that could affect the level of climate change awareness and their source of information.