Social Media Usage Among High School Students

Social media is defined as a web-established facility that permits people to create profiles within a limited system, communicate with various users with whom they are connected, and view and navigate through their connections (Wang, Chen & Liang, 2011). High school students have always found out ways of relaxing and bonding with their friends and have therefore resulted into regular use of social media and internet where they have created online profiles on various social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter among other social media sites. Social media is known to consume a lot of valuable time when not controlled especially for the young high school students, and this has a negative impact on their overall performance. This paper is therefore aimed at understanding how high school students are utilizing social media and how it affects then about their overall performance in school. 

Data Collection

            To gain an understanding of how social media influences high school education among students, a survey targeting various students was designed and distributed to students from multiple institutions. 

 I used cluster sampling method to collect data since it is a low-cost means of collecting data. I then administered the questionnaires. This sampling method was used because a complete sampling framework was unattainable. To collect data, 15 institutions were put in clusters and then a sample of units was chosen from each of the sampled institutions.

            Since subjects in a cluster usually have a positive correlation, cost reduction for the clustered institutions will seldom be linked to a decrease in data accuracy in relation to sampling designs that distribute the samples amongst the entire population although these designs are expensive to execute. The data collection process could have been affected by selection bias since the researchers were not solely involved in the selection of the respondents and therefore the respondent would have been selected in a biased manner.

Research Questions

            Quantitative Questions

1. How long has it been since you joined social media? (years)

2. How much time do you spend on social media sites in a day? (hours)

3. What is the amount of time you spend on personal studies? (hours)

4. How long has it been since you joined high school? (years)

Qualitative Questions

5. Which social media platforms do you prefer? (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, others)

6. How would you honestly define your overall performance in school? (Very poor, Poor, Average, Excellent)

7. Do you think social media has a direct influence on high school students’ poor performance in school? (Yes, No, I don’t know, Decline to answer)

Summary Statistics

Mean

Median

Mode

Variance

Standard Deviation

Question 1

3.24

3

5

1.546

2.39

Question 2

3.8

5

2

2.358

5.56

Question 3

2.9

2

3

1.258

1.58

Question 4

2.6

1

4

1.2

1.44

            Microsoft Excel was developed with a feature that has functions. These functions are a set of predefined formulas and they are already availed in excel. Formulas for mean, median, mode, variance, and standard deviation were entered one at a time to quickly compute a string of values without having to enter these values manually into the formulas. After computing the data obtained from the subjects, the results are as entered into the table above.

Graphs

            Qualitative Graphs

Figure 1

            The graph shown in figure 1 above represents the feedback of this survey from high school students. Majority of the respondents of this survey said that they prefer Facebook to other social media sites with Twitter coming in second, Instagram third, YouTube fourth, while some preferred using other social media sites. The data represented above indicates that social media has become very popular among high school students.

Figure 2

The figure 2 above is a chart which represents a sample of 30 subjects asked about their overall performance as a result of regular use of social media. It is clear that majority of the students perform averagely with 33% representation and the top performing standing at only 27%. The poor and very poorly performing students are 17% and 23% respectively. About 40% of the students are not satisfied with their overall performance, and this helps to demonstrate that social media has played a role in the poor performance of about 40% of the students due to the amount of time they spend on media site instead of studying.

Quantitative Graphs

Frequency table showing the number of years since the subjects joined social media

Time(years)

Frequency

1

6

2

7

3

3

4

4

5

10

            The above frequency table shows the number of years since the subjects joined social media. The table indicates that most of the students joined social media for more than five years ago with the least number of items having joined more than three years ago.      

Figure 3

The figure 3 above is a histogram representing the number of years since the subjects joined social media against the frequency. The histogram is an indication that many students are entering social media at a very early age or even before joining high school. This raises concern as the student may become exposed to peer pressure or cyber-bullying not to mention other negative influences brought about by social media.

            Scatter Diagram

Figure 4

Finding the relationship

A=dots on the upper left + dots on the lower right

B= dots on the upper right + dots on the lower left

Q= the smaller between A and B

N= A+ B so,

A= 6 + 4= 10

B= 1 + 3= 4

Q= 4

N= 10+4= 14

Checking from the trend test table, the limit of N= 14 is 2, and the limit for the data (Q) is 4. Q is greater than the limit which means that the data pattern might have occurred accidentally. This means that there is no relationship established between the two sets of data.

            The above scatter diagram shows the relationship between two sets of quantitative data as it was obtained from the subjects of this survey. This relationship helps in the understanding of whether poor performance can be directly attributed to the prolonged use of social media.

            The variable in question here is time spent on social media and time spent on personal studies. The above correlation analysis has proven that there is no relationship between the amount of time spent on studies and the amount of time spent on social media. The correlation coefficient, in this case, is 4 and this means that there is no straight line relationship.

Conclusion

            From the above findings, it is clear that the number of high school students who are progressively using social media platforms as a requirement is increasing all over the universe. The interconnectedness brought about by social media has crossed the boundaries and brought people together through interaction. While this seems like a great thing, there are also a lot of other associated negative effects for the high school students whose minds are still evolving. More than 75% of the people who took part in this survey could not live without the internet while only about 25% thought that internet is a distraction to them and therefore they do not need it. I was surprised by the lack of a direct correlation between the time spent on social media, and that spent on studies. I assumed that the more, the time a student spent on social media the less the time they spent in their studies. I was comfortable with the questions that I used since they helped me achieve the objectives of my survey. I would advise a student who wants to start similar research to ensure that they are involved in the selection of the respondents so that they ensure that there is no selection bias. I believe this bias could be one of the reasons why the results were not as per my expectations. 

References

Wang, Q., Chen, W., & Liang, Y. (2011). The effects of social media on college students.