Abstract:
The influence of the media on the psychosocial development of children and the youth is profound. Kenya has
witnessed tremendous and rapid expansion of the mass media, whose large proportion of features is Western
oriented. Most of this information focuses on violence, drugs, relationships and sexuality. The available
literature shows that most young people are heavy consumers of both electronic and print media. This study was
therefore designed to establish the relationship between levels of exposure to mass media and students’ drug
abuse in selected secondary schools within Nakuru County Kenya. The study was guided by the Social Learning
Theory pioneered by Albert Bandura with its principle of “modeling” and operant conditioning theory by B.F
Skinner. The study employed survey research design. In view of this, questionnaires were used to collect both
qualitative and quantitative data. The independent variable in the study was levels of exposure to mass media.
The dependent variable was students’ Drug abuse. The study was carried out in the 3 Sub-counties of Nakuru
town, Molo and Nakuru North, within Nakuru County, Kenya. The sample size for this study was 482 sampled
from a total student population of 12,300 from the 3 selected Sub-counties. The study areas were purposively
sampled while stratified random sampling and simple random sampling were used to sample schools and
students respectively. The study used 8 public secondary schools distributed as follows, 3 were Sub-county day
and mixed, one provincial day and mixed, 2 provincial boarding and mixed, 1 national boys boarding and 1
national girls boarding. Quantitative data was analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS)
version 20 for Windows. Specifically, Chi square statistic was used to test the significance of the stated null
hypotheses, set at α=0.05. The key findings indicated that levels of exposure to mass media influences students
to drug abuse (P=0.007 that is <0.05). Test done proved that levels of exposure to mass media are related to
students’ Drug abuse. It was recommended that government, teachers and parents undertake measure to control
adverse effects of media consumption by students, such as indulgence in drug abuse.
