Intro and methods

Does social media have negative effects on college students’ grades?

Introduction 

            Social media is everywhere. The evolution of social media and the internet has brought a new age of interaction and is now in almost every aspect of our daily lives. While social media has given us new ways to share ideas, stay in touch, learn, and grow it has changed how we live our lives. There are of course positives and negatives to social media but one aspect in particular I was intrigued with was the negative effects on a college students’ grades. A survey was conducted asking college students what they thought about their social media use and their grades. 

            Many researchers have done studies similar. Three researchers Markus Appel, Caroline Marker, and Timo Gnambs took a closer look at the affects of social media and academic performance. They analyzed results from almost thiry thousand individuals worldwide and they had 4 results. They concluded that people who use social media to strictly communicate about school-related topics tended to have slightly better grades then those who used social media such as Instagram, twitter, etc. 

            In contrast, Some researchers have said that social media actually has minimal effect on academic performance or is having a hard time finding the correlation at all. Some Researchers from the University of Bamberg, Germany also did a study. They found that students who already have lower grades are more easily drawn to social media as they are stressed and it is an easy distraction or way out. 

Methods

Participants: 

Those who participated in this study were strictly college students varying from freshman to senior years who attend the University of Iowa. This survey was only applicable to those who use social media. 

Procedure:

The students who participated were asked to answer the questions in an anonymous online survey. The questions of this survey were multiple choice pertaining to social media and grades. My survey included 6 questions. My first was simple “Do you use social media?” because if they don’t they would not be relevant to my data. The second question was “How many hours a day do you use social media?” giving them 5 options of less than an hour a day all the way to over four hours a day. The third question was “what social media do you use the most?” just to see the most popular college students social media site/app. The fourth was, “Do you feel when you use social media more frequently in your day you get distracted from your homework?”. The fifth was “Do you feel like your grades suffer when you use social media?”. The Last question was, “what is your grade average” . The participants have about a week and a half to complete these questions. 

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180219103217.htm

https://www.thestar.com.my/tech/tech-news/2018/02/22/is-social-media-really-affecting-academic-performance/