Social media’s effects on college students

Globally, college students frequently use social media in a variety of learning environments. Youths have developed an addiction to online interaction, according to Selwyn (2009), as a result of the development of social media platforms like Twitter, Myspace, Facebook, IM, Instagram, and LinkedIn. College students in especially are drawn to and use technology almost constantly; the majority of them spend the majority of their time browsing and chatting. Even while they are studying, they send messages, use Skype, chat, and listen to music on their iPod. Currently, professors encourage the students to use social media in order to keep updated on the classroom activities as well as use it for educational research. Some classrooms have also used social sites as means to conduct assignments. With more focus put on the benefits of the online interaction of communication, less emphasis has been put on the possible impact of social media on college student performance and development. A study conducted by Michikyan, Subrahmanyam, and Deniss (2015) revealed that college students having lower GPAs usually spend most of their tie in Facebook compared to those having higher GPAs. It is, thus, important to consider the possible impacts among the students.

With the existence of social media, students are able to get information easily. There are four forms of interaction strategies in communication that aids in the extraction of information including direct, active, extractive, and passive. In direct strategy, one can get information from their targets directly i.e a friend interviewing the other for information about themselves (Wang, Chen, & Liang, 2011). Active strategy entails students retrieving information without making direct contact with the person in question; this is usually done through a third party like a mutual friend. Currently, students use google, yahoo, bing, amazon, among many more to obtain both passive and active data. Getting information regarding academics, social issues, and news updates has been made easy and affordable to everyone. Sites such as the New York Times, America Journals, BBC, CNN, and other sites, have made it easy to retrieve information relevant to students. This, therefore, enhances interaction as well as communication.

According to Mastrodicasa & Metellus (2013), social media increases confidence in revealing information among college students. Social media hinders the direct conversation between one person and another. Most people find it difficult to share private information on face-to-face interaction. Through social media, there is a comfortable atmosphere created to open up to other people. According to Isaac (2014), direct contact deters people from giving out details. A research conducted regarding information on people who are transgender in the United States showed that the best way to collect data from the respondents is through social media and email. All those who were asked one-on-one shied away to answer questions that were asked. This is due to the fact that the respondents cannot get comfortable sharing such information in an open interview. It is, therefore, important to acknowledge the benefit of media on collecting information.

In the nursing field, social media has also been used as educational platform and a means to improve clinical education by the nursing students. The clinical curricular has adopted the use of social media in order to reflect the changing culture of students which encompass high rate of usage of these media platforms by youths (Wang, 2013). A survey conducted in 2011 revealed that 38% of pharmacy institutions use Facebook and Twitter to teach the undergraduate curricula with a half planning to use social media in future (George & Dellasega, 2011). Teachers have also created Twitter hashtag of nursing documents and resources so as to enable students share the resources. With YouTube, students ate able to view videos and respond to them through discussions.

It is also common that many literatures associate social media use with poor academic performance. According to Fogel & Nutter-Upham (2011), “On average, college students report that they engage in academic procrastination between 30 and 60% of the time.” This involves failing to conduct academic activity at the desired timeframe, thus, resulting in late submission of assignment. Wang, Chen, & Liang (2011), however, argues that procrastination is linked to various factors including the student, the existing timeframe of the assignment, and time needed to complete the work. The author stated that a lot of findings reveal that the ability of students to complete assignment is related to their beliefs regarding school work and the effort they are willing to put on their academics.

Another study reveals that social media does not affect performance. Focused on the need for cognition and GPA grades, the study shows that socially interactive technologies do not have direct impacts on college students’ GPAs. Wang, Chen, & Liang (2011) noted that using Facebook to instruct students can actually assist in achievement of better grades and increased satisfaction with the learning experience. As such, these platforms can act as interaction channels, enabling facilities to adopt more participative and active roles in learning and teaching. Research by Cotton and Junco (2012), however, considered Facebook and texting to affect schoolwork and the overall GPA. As students engage in texting while completing their assignments, their capacity for cognitive processing is affected.

To assess the reliability of the literature, the research proposed a hypothesis in which the use of social media is directly linked to increase in academic performance. This was reached at considering the fact that most literature support the use of social media. Additionally, professors encourage students to utilize different social media platforms in academics. The main research question to address this hypothesis is: What are the impacts of social media use among students? The study, therefore, investigated the impacts of social media use among college students. The study will help doctors and parents in counseling of students on the most effective communication tools to use while at school and interacting with others.

Methodology

The methodology used for the study was quantitative research survey. The study attempted to analyze the impacts of social media consumption among college students. A significant method of collecting data for the study is quantitative method. Quantitative methodology involves an empirical research where the data are in the form of numbers; this means that the research will investigate the education issue through statistically significant outcomes. The study considered the use of questionnaires as the best instruments for data collection. The sample size was 116 participants which consisted of University undergraduate students from three different universities. The inclusion criteria included both males and females with a starting age of 18 years old. The participants were notified of the study through email; their consents were obtained through the filling of consent forms located on an online academic website.

The survey questionnaires asked the participants about the use of social media, their academic performance, and GPA. The survey lasted for about 10 minutes, and a debriefing lasted for approximately 5 minutes. With a correlational design, the study considered the independent variable to be social media use while the dependent variable was the GPA of the students. The SPSS software was used to analyze and interpret the data collected; these were then used to understand whether the hypothesis of the study was correct.

Results

The study was aimed at determining the relationship between the time that students spend on social media and GPA. After analyzing the data, it was revealed that there is no correlation between GPA and the time spent by students in using social media. Although this is contrary to the hypothesis of the study, the results reveal that there is no significance (r=.236, p = .011). It was found that the GPA of students is likely to decrease with the amount of time spent on social media. The GPA was broken down into percentages. From this, it was clear that 4.2% of the students had a GPA ranging between 2.00-2.50. 9.2% of the participants who used social media most of their time revealed that their GPA ranged from 3.01 and 3.50. 9.2% of the remaining students showed that they have a GPA of 3.51-4.00. In considering the change in their GPAs after adopting the use of social media, 25% of the participants declined to answer. 40% of them claimed that their GPA decreased over time, while the remaining participants showed their GPA increased.

Discussion

The hypothesis of the study revealed that the use of social media can positively impact college students. However, the results showed did not agree with this; social media use by undergraduates negatively affects academics of the students. This, therefore, supports the study by Fogel & Nutter-Upham (2013) who had associated social media use with procrastination. The results also support the findings of Cotton and Junco (2012) which showed that social media may act as destruction, thus, causing poor concentration.

During the study, the researcher noted some limitations. The study could have greatly benefited the research fraternity if a larger sample was used. Before analyzing the results, the study included 122 participants; this was later narrowed to 116 since some of the participants refused to participate in the process. Some of the students also feared to fully cooperate since they thought their anonymity would not be kept. However, we assured them there was no need to panic and could hide their identity if they wished to. The study was also unable to include graduate students since the sample size could have become larger; future studies should consider this group.

In conclusion, students should monitor their usage of social media as well as the time they spend on them. Social media can become profitable when used in academics especially among classmates. These sites can also be used for social adjustments to improve interaction and collaboration among students. Although college students always use social media, it is important they control the consumption to maintain a balance between academic performance and social media interaction.

References

Cotten, S., & Junco, R. (2012). No A 4 U: The relationship between multitasking and academic performance. Computers & Education, 59(2), 505-514.

Fogel, J., & Nutter-Upham, K. (2011). Academic procrastination in college students: the role of self-reported executive functioning, Journal of clinicaland experimental neuropsychology, 33(3), 344-357.

George, D. R., & Dellasega, C. (2011). Use of Social Media in Graduate Level Medical Humanities Education: Two Pilot Studies from Penn State College of Medicine. Medical Teacher, 33(8), e429-e434.

Junco, R., Heilberger, G., & Loken, E. (2011). The effect of Twitter on college student engagement and grades. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 27(2), 119-132.

Mastrodicasa, Jeanna, & Metellus, P. (2013). The Impact of Social Media on College Students. Journal of College and Character 14(1) 21-30.

Michikyan, M., Kaveri S., & Jessica D. (2015). Facebook Use and Academic Performance among College Students: A Mixed-methods Study with a Multi-ethnic Sample. Computers in Human Behavior. 45(1): 265-272.

Selwyn, N. (2009).Faceworking: Exploring Students’ Education‐related Use of Facebook. Learning, Media and Technology 34(2). Pp. 157-174.

Wang, J. (2013). What higher education professionals need to know about today’s students: Online social networks. TOJET: The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology, 12(3), 180-193.

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