Running head: EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON STUDENTS’ ACADEMIC

PERFROMANCE 1

Effects of Social Media on Students’ Academic

Performance

Prepared for:

COMSATS University, Lahore.

Prepared by:

Shameer Masood

24-November-2018
EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON STUDENTS’ ACADEMIC PERFROMANCE 2

Executive Summary:

Social media has become a very important part of everyone’s life. More than one third of internet

users use at least one social media. But as the social media is rising it creates some negative

impact on the students’ academic life. Majority of students spend their time using social media

application which distracts them from studies. It is recommended that one should use social

media only for positive and educational purpose. In the end we can conclude that social media is

no doubt a very useful and important factor but its negative impact cannot be ignored. But it

depend on the person whether he uses this for positive purpose or for negative purposes.
EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON STUDENTS’ ACADEMIC PERFROMANCE 3

Table of Contents Page

Introduction…………………………………………………….4

Scope………………………………………………………..5

Analysis……………………………………………………..6

Conclusion…………………………………………………..7

Recommendations…………………………………………...8

Refferences…………………………………………………….9

Appendices…………………………………………………..9

Appendices 1…………………………………………..9

Appendices 2…………………………………………..10
EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON STUDENTS’ ACADEMIC PERFROMANCE 4

Introduction:

Social media is an internet based form of wireless communication. There are many forms of

social media which includes blogs, micro-blogs, wikis, podcasts, widgets, virtual worlds social

networking websites, sharing sites, instant messaging, video-sharing sites etc. The internet

evolution has made its usage as the best mode of communication. According to a study two third

of our internet users serve social media websites more than any other thing on the internet.

Social media enables its users to create contents, share them everywhere and bookmark them at a

very prodigious rate. In the past, people rely on letters and post to communicate with each other.

Social media has breached this gap by giving its users the ability to connect with people around

the world, make friends of any part of the world.

Statement of Problem: The growing use of social media among students cannot be

underestimated. It can be seen that students spend most of their time on social media rather than

studying which cause them to fail in final examination. Also, the study conducted by Maya

(2015), revealed that media use contribute to lower academic performance, low self-perceptions

and less interest in college oriented carriers. Academic excellence plays a crucial role in

everybody’s life because it leads to a successful career and a handsome job, but due to increase

use of social media among students the academic excellence rate among students is decreasing.

According to a report, almost all the students at tertiary level of education use social media sites

and applications.

Objectives of the study: Our objective is to find the level of exposure of students at

COMSATS who used social media sites. To ascertain what students of COMSATS use social

media for chatting and downloading videos. To check how use of social media has influenced the

academic excellence of students in university.

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Literature Review:

The Concept of Social Media

Social media continuously keeps changing and as such it is difficult to assign a fixed definition

to it as Jacka and Scott (2011), argued that ‘’there is no single recognized definition for social

media’’. However some scholars have defined it in different perspectives over the past years.

Kaplan and Haenlein (2010), defined social media as a group of internet- based applications that

build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0 and allow the creation and

exchange of user-generated content. The Oxford dictionary (2011), also defined social media as

“websites and applications used for social networking”. Another definition of social media is that

it is a ‘’communication channel which is very popular, extremely fast and broad, has proven to

be highly effective, as well as trusted by billions of people , to share and discover content

concerning individuals, brands, information, entertainment and knowhow’’ (Dearborn, 2014).

One theme that all these definitions underpin is that social media involves some form of

communication between individuals over the internet.

Positive effects on student’s academic life

Education due to social media has become very easy. Biggest example is distance learning.

Online lectures of universities are available for far distance students.

We can get every type of information using media and share it with our friends and with

everyone in the world. Majority of students especially at PHD level use social media to

ameliorate their studies.

their studies.

Negative effect on student’s academic life

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Major threat associated with social media is that are the cause of criminal activities and fake

contacts. People negatively used the social media for doing criminal activities.

Cyberbullying is another big disaster. People use social media make friends online and usually

people do cyber bullying on media by pointing out some negative things about a person and viral

it everywhere on the internet this is a very big problem of social that is kept rising.

Analysis:

Findings:

According to a survey in COMSATS University Lahore, Pakistan 97% of the total students have

at least one social media platform. Almost all the students are in Facebook and WhatsApp.

Twitter and Instagram are other two major social media platform used by around 56% of total

students. According to a survey on time spent on social media by students, about 8.6% students

of COMSATS spend 0 to 30 minutes on social media while 15.7% spend 1 hour to 2 hours daily.

While remaining 75.7 spend more than 2 hours on social-media.

The study conducted by Kirschner and Karpinski (2010), that over-involvement or obsession

with social networking sites (SNSs) by students can have negative impacts on their academic

performance.
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82% of total students indicated that they mainly use social media for watching videos and

downloading pictures and videos. While 32% also it for academic purposes. While remaining

students claim that they use social media for chatting and making friends on the internet.

These findings show that most of the students spend time on social media for doing things that

are not related to studies.

To get a better review of students who are addicted to social media we passed a survey from

students of university. This is given in a table below;

Statement SA Agree Disagree Strongly Total

Disagree

I am a social media addicted and it 9.7% 28.6 37.2 24.5 100

greatly affect my academic life

Social media is the cause of 7.5 44.2 35.1 14.2 100

distraction from studies for me

Time spent on social media can 16.8 46.1 15 11 100

never be compared to time spent on

my studies.

This table shows the addictiveness of social media among university students of COMSATS.

This indicates that most of the student get distracted from studies due to social media which

greatly affect their academic career.

Conclusion:

No doubt, that social media has become an important tool in human life so far as communication

is concerned. Mankind is getting huge gathering from social media not only in communication
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but also in scholarly activities. Distance educations system has humiliated and make easier for

everyone because of social media. It is no longer difficult for students to get local and

international information from friends or any other persons. We can get lectures through internet

without just sitting in a classroom that is thousands of miles away from us. It is said “Social

media is a useful servant but a dangerous master” or we can say it’s a sword with two edges.

Students must be aware of its dangerous effects. Studies revealed that despite of all the benefits

there is to some extent addiction and distraction that is caused by negative use of social media

when can have serious and bad impact on student’s academic life.

Recommendations:

In the light of all the findings, I have made some recommendations:

1. Seminars should be organized in the various schools or faculties to enlighten students

more about the possible implications of social media usage on their academic

performance.

2. Students must make sure that they spend less time on chatting on social media with

friends.

3. Teachers and lecturers must adopt new strategies by giving assignments or discussions

on social media sites and applications to help the students know about the good use of

social media in academics.

4. Students must make sure that they spend minimum time on chatting on social media.

5. The university authority and management should block those social media sites that can

distract students during their university time to help them focus on their studies.
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References:

Arquero, J. L., & Esteban, R., (2013). Using social network sites in Higher education: an

experience in business studies. Journal of innovations in education and teaching

international.DOI:10.1080/14703297.2012.760772.

Asur, S. & Huberman, B.A. (2010). Predicting the Future with social media. WI-IAT’10

Proceedings of the 2010 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence and

Intelligent Agent Technology, 1. DOI:10.1109/WI-IAT.2010.63. Retrieved from

http://www.researchgate.net/publication/45909086.

Boyd, D. M & Ellison, N. B. (2007). Social network sites: definition, history and scholarships.

Journal of computer-mediated communication, 13(1) (2007) pp.210-230. DOI:10.1111/j.1083-

6101.2007.00393.x.

Brown, S. (2010). From VLEs to Learning webs: the implication of Web 2.0 for learning and

teaching. Interactive Learning Environments, 18(1) pp. 1-10. Retrieved from

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10494820802102158983.

Appendices:

Appendix:1

QUESTIONS OF FOCUS GROUP DISCUSSION

For students

1. What is social media for you?

2. Why do you use social media?

3. Do you think being addictiveness to social media affect the academic

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performance as a student?

4. How students utilize social media for academic purposes?

5. What challenges are faced by students by using social media?

6. Is there a gender difference in the usage of social media?

7. Does visiting educational sites in social media helps in learning or does it

gives wrong information?

Appendix:2

For teachers

1. For learning and teaching purpose is social media useful to you?

2. Did you make used of the educational sites in social media to supplement your

knowledge?

3. What is your opinion of persons who use social media?

5. Have you observed any negative change or differences in the grades of students due to

use of social media?

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