How learners from township schools use social media to enhance their academic resilience

<p dir="ltr">The approach to advance the purpose of this study was three-dimensional. The first dimension was to determine what resilience factors were used by township learners; the second was to determine the effects of social media on the academic resilience of these township learners; and the third was to ascertain how learners maintain their well-being when disconnected from social media. The study was grounded in qualitative research, as this allowed the researcher to gain knowledge of the lived experience of the participants. Purposive sampling was used to select the participants that consisted of 10 learners, which included two boys and eight girls aged between 14 and 16 years. Data was collected with the use of semi-structured interviews. The interpretive phenomenological analysis yielded the following key themes: social media’s impact on participants, social media’s use for academic purposes, avoiding social media distractions, and the resilience factors used by the participants. The findings showed that learners were able to use social media to enhance their academic resilience.</p>