Effect of Social Media on Academic Performance
The advent of the internet has revolutionized communications. Social Media phenomenon, which was birthed by the internet revolution, has rapidly pervaded aspects of life and has proven impactful as a source of information and a means of communication and interaction. Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Whatsapp. Social media adoption has been most favorable among young people, with the majority of college students being ardent users of social media technology, which has elicited much concern over the possible impact of overindulgence in social media on the academic performance of the students. Social media technology as a revolutionary instrument of communication and information affects the academic outcomes of college students depending on the actions, intentions of the users, and their experiences while indulging on the internet-based communication platforms. A balance between academic time and social media time is necessary for college students to maintain positive academic outcomes.
Social media indulgence portends an effect on the emotional and mental health of students. College life is a period characterized by dynamism and exploration, which may lead the students to overindulgence in the social media platforms, causing a distraction from their academic objectives. Moreover, favorable academic outcomes depend on the stable mental and emotional health of the students, which improves their concentration in academic work and course requirements. However, social media may impact the emotional and mental health of the students adversely. The use of social media by college students is strongly related to mental health concerns like depression, low self-esteem, issues of body image, sleeping disorders, anxiety, and social isolation.
Excessive use of social media may make college students anxious or depressed as they compare the content published in social media and their lives. The pressure on the college students when they idealize the lives of other social media users also affects their self-esteem, which inadvertently affects their academic performance as much of their time is spent comparing unrealistic views of the world through social media and their lives (Mushtaq and Abdelmadjid).
Social media is addictive. College students may find themselves engaging in social media platforms for long periods of time. The time spent by Students on social media affects the proportion of time accorded to academics. Consequently, the college students end up having unfavorable academic outcomes as they did not invest quality and adequate time to their academic activities but rather used the time to engage on social media.
The surge in social media use by college students has resulted in a phenomenon known as social isolation. Social isolation is an adverse effect of social media that affects the academic outcomes of college students. Overindulgence in social media engenders dependence on online friends and information sources which may socially isolate the college students who use the social media platforms as they will not invest in the real academic, social circles (Al-Rahmi and Othman). Consequently, the students may get out of touch with their academic reality resulting in negative academic performances. Social isolation created by overindulgence in social media technologies often gives the college students a false sense of having true relationships that never materialize into real relationships in the real world. The social isolation caused by online friends impedes the creation of vital peer support and mentor associations.
The addiction of college students to social media affects the interpersonal relations positively and negatively. The detrimental effect of social media on the interpersonal relationships of students stems from the lack of social, ethical values perverse within the social media platforms. Since social media use is virtually unlimited and unrestricted, internet professionalism is often disregarded by some users who may be interacting with the college students on the platforms. Consequently, privacy violations, profanities, blatant discrimination, and other forms of immoral behavior may be experienced by college students as they engage in social media platforms. Thus, the negative content posted on social media may affect the college students emotionally and psychologically, which ultimately affects their academic performances as their concentration will be diverted to dealing with their experiences on social media platforms instead of academic work. Also, the content published on the various social media platforms may influence the college students in mimicking similar behavior and topics in their various social media platforms handles, resulting in time wastage as the students build their own social media profiles.
Social media addiction directly results in less time for academic work and less academic behaviors (“How Social Media Can Affect College Students And Their Mental Health”). College students who are addicted to social media are less likely to engage in academic activities like assignment completion and class attendance.
College students who are addicted to social media may find themselves overindulging to the extent of losing sleep. Sleep is critical to the realization of favorable academic outcomes as it is a time for the brain to rest and replenish. However, when the body clock is interfered with persistently, the college students may not have the right mental shape to effectively engage and concentrate on academic activities. Expectedly, the academic performances of college students who lose sleep while engaging in social media are affected negatively. The lack of sleep by college students as a result of spending too much time on social media may result in truancy and chronic school absenteeism as the students would be too exhausted during the day to attend classes. Thus, too much time spent on social media by college students affects academic performance since the college students are unable to complete their course requirements and submit assignments which apart from affecting grades, may impact their overall academic outcomes since course hours are a prerequisite for graduation.
Social media use among college students has been established to be prevalent even during lecture periods. Consequently, the students who are engaged in social media when lecturers are teaching fail to capture the essence and instructions of the courses. The students usually don’t pay attention and instead focus on unnecessary content and topics on social media with the consequences of them missing vital information relating to their course. The students may thus fail to understand or gain knowledge of assignment submission, exam sitting, or study groups.
The pervasive use of social media may also affect the content that college students produce in assignments or exams. For instance, over indulgence may affect the writing skills of college students as they may employ the writing skills used in social media platforms such as the shortening of words like ‘k’ for ‘okay which is not acceptable grammar in academic standards and may result in low grades.
The extensive use of social media among college students also affects their physical health apart from emotional and mental health. Health issues such as back pain may occur when the college students engage in the social media platforms for long periods while maintaining improper or wrong posture or extended eye strain from staring at the computer or phone screen. The physical health effects of social media affect the effectiveness of college students in studying, which eventually affects their performance.
Per contra, social media use may also be used to improve the academic performances of college students. The positive impacts of social media to college students are that it enables the students to connect to educational groups in their field of study, which gives them access to important and authentic knowledge-based content (“Teens And Social Media Use: What’s The Impact?”). The academic groups created on the social media platforms enable college students to connect with their lecturers and professors so as to share important information and knowledge instructions for the courses. Furthermore, the groups enable the college students to present their viewpoints and ideas, which encourages academic innovation and consequently impacts positively on academic performance. Moreover, instead of sending time on unnecessary content online, the college students may use social media platforms like YouTube to access videos with educational content or even lectures that may aid in broadening the knowledge scope of the students and consequently improving their academic outcomes. The share option in social media platforms becomes important when college students want to share educational content with their fellow students.
Social media is an unavoidable and indispensable aspect of modern life with positive and negative effects. However, moderation is necessary for social media indulgence, particularly by college students whose primary objective should be their academic life in as much as they are inseparable from their social media platforms and pages. It is, therefore, necessary that college students be advised and guided on matters such as social media professionalism, social media addiction, and the importance of balancing their social media time and their academic time. Finally, instead of academic-unrelated content, college students should leverage the power of social media to widen their knowledge scope, particularly in their academic field, to improve their performance.
Works Cited
Al-Rahmi, W., and M. Othman. “The impact of social media use on academic performance among university students: A pilot study.” Journal of information systems research and innovation 4.12 (2013): 1-10.
Mushtaq, Ahmad Jahed, and Abdelmadjid Benraghda. “The effects of social media on undergraduate students’ academic performances.” Library Philosophy and Practice (2018): 299-302.
“Teens And Social Media Use: What’s The Impact?”. Mayo Clinic, 2020, http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/tween-and-teen-health/in-depth/teens-and-social-media-use/art-20474437.
“How Social Media Can Affect College Students And Their Mental Health.” Medium, 2020, http://medium.com/@ibrah096/how-social-media-can-affect-college-students-and-their-mental-health-edf7dd3acab9.