IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA USAGE ON ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE AND LIFESTYLE HABITS AMONG HIGHER SECONDARY STUDENTS: A MIXED-METHODS ANALYSIS

The widespread use of social networks by educational users continues to produce growing worries about school success and daily life practices. Researchers evaluate the bond among student social media use and their academic achievements with their lifestyle characteristics including rest duration and movement routines. A Sequential Exploratory Mixed-Methods Design method helped to generate qualitative information through focus group discussions for student perception analysis before creating a structured quantitative survey distributed to 161 students from both government and private institutions. Students who use social media for over 1-2 hours each day represent 31.6% of the total study participants and engage in entertainment activities and social communication. The statistic shows that 41% of students utilize social media platforms for educational reasons however they provide contradictory results between subjective performance evaluation and objective examination results thus indicating possible misjudgement of social media's educational value. Extensive social media consumption leads to both bad time management skills along with diminished rest quality and impaired academic concentration. The findings from chi-square tests show social media utilization affects the sleep patterns (p value < 0.05) among government school attendees but does not create this link in private school students. The results emphasize the necessity to create formal social media rules and digital education together with regulatory frameworks which support students to merge learning and leisure. Leaders in policymaking together with educators and parents need to execute joined efforts for developing interventions which prevent negative effects from social media usage while maximizing its educational value.