Does the Amount of Time on Social Media Hinder or Help an Individual’s Grades at School

Social media usage by students has recently increased because of easy access to devices such as smart phones, tablets and laptops which are connected to the internet. It is perceived that school grades will suffer when spending too much time on social sites such as Facebook. Social media is an online platform in which the exchange ideas, feelings, personal information, pictures and videos is shared. The number of students that use social media is drastically increasing it has gone to seventy-three percent of wired American teens now use social media websites (Dijck). Social networking became popular between 2004 and 2006, after Facebook and Myspace were created. Facebook, for example has over 500 million members and it is still growing and approximately 85% of undergraduate students are Facebook users. These numbers are expected to grow since Facebook users will continue to grow (Dijck). Just like that an overwhelming number of students are using social media and this new trend does not seem to be slowing down any time soon.

This relates to sociology because in the upcoming years social media and the usage of phones has drastically increased and social media is another potential distraction to a student. With the popularity of social networking websites on the rise, our social interaction is affected in multiple ways as we adapt to our increasingly technological world. The way web users interact and talk to each other has changed and still is changing continuously. But what makes social media different from any other distractions that kept students away from their academic potential? It is the fact that people just pick up the phone and start scrolling through Instagram without even noticing. Since most people always have their phones on them, it is very convenient.

Social media comes with both good and bad when it comes to how it influences a person's education. Some ways social media benefits an individual is by making it easier to collaborate with other students, it can help receive instantaneous feedback and even foster creativity. The internet has changed the way teenagers speak and write the English language by making misspelling and shorten words, people tends to type faster on the Internet and this generates a unique behavior that ignores proper language. On top of that many student type/texts more than they write so this trait may even be carried on to school.

With all this good, comes its negative as well. Social media now directly influences how people communicate with one another, although it is now easier to communicate with someone far away, social media has shown to decrease face to face interactions (Staff writers). Also, not as many people use social media for academic use. In a study conducted by Shana, (2012), it was revealed that students use social network mainly for making friends and chatting. The result showed that only 26 percent of the students (respondents) indicated that they use social media for academic purpose.

To carry out this experiment I would be send out as an anonymous survey asking about how much time a person spends on social media a week and then ask what their current gpa is. The paper will also ask them to identify their gender. This survey can be asked to not only college students but high school students as well. Not only will the data be separated by age but also by gender to see if that has any influence as well. The location in which this survey will take place is New York City, since this is a very diverse city.

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