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Bassam Alharbi

Professor Malcolm Campbell

UWRT 1104

8 November 2017

Is Social Media Beneficial or Harmful for College Students?

Last year, I had a research class that required a presentation for the midterm project. The

students had been divided into 4 groups. The members of my group and I wanted to talk about

the effect of climate change in the future, and the other three groups talked about the impact of

social media on college students. The problem was that they only critiqued social media without

providing the other side of social media which is the positive impact. Moreover, they did not

even provide solutions in their presentations about how each one of us could reduce the negative

impact, so I asked them where are the solutions for the issues that you have provided in the

presentations. All of them said to me there are no solutions, you have to reduce your use of

social media. Wait, What? I said There are always solutions for every issue, why cannot be for

this one? They said we did not find any solutions for this issue I got it, actually, all of you did

not search and read enough to find the solutions so that we can get the best of social media.

Therefore, I would like to know the positive and negative impact of social media, what the

difference between them is, and how students can reduce the negative side while using social

media.

Social media has helped everyone to become better in terms of communication. In the

past, people used to communicate with each other face to face or by sending letters because there

was no phones or websites that could help to reach to the other person. However, nowadays,
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social media has made the communication much easier. You can communicate with anyone from

all around the world while you are sitting at your home. Which determine the impact that social

media made on our lives is huge, whether you agree or disagree, but lets put into the

consideration that social media started to have more negative impact than the past, thats true

because as many people who use social media in their daily routine, it increases the negative

impact as well.

Whos affected?

Nowadays, teenagers have more access to social media than it was in the past because

they grew up in technology and social media era. The new generation knows how to use

technology more whether at home or outside. Furthermore, the way to approach social media is

becoming easier for teenagers because they can check their social media accounts through their

smartphones. The teenagers use social media to address their needs by approaching many things

through social media such as making new friends, express their opinions, following their idols,

and following sports news. However, the negative impact that they would have gotten from

spending a lot of time on social media could ruin their future lives because it might change their

personality, their attitude, and more importantly their academic performance.

According to Teen Safe website, which is an organization that cares about teenagers

lives. Said in their article Should Parents Monitor their Childrens Social Media. They found

that as a parent you cannot stop your kid from accessing the social media because kids have

more knowledge about using technology than their parents. Also, you cannot ignore what they

are doing in social media because it offers them many things that should not be seen by a kid

such as porn or violence videos, which would be the wrong to do. What they said is parents

should educate their kids, develop their trust, and show them that you count on them. In that
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case, kids would understand why their parents are concern about their technology freedom

which they are getting from their parents. Then they would behave much better while they are

using social media.

The other group that has gotten a huge impact from social media is college students. Who

spend 9 hours on social media daily which is more than what they spend on studying their school

material. According to a study made by Pew Research Center (2017) about social media facts,

86% of college students have at least one account in social media. Furthermore, 60% of college

students have admitted that they might be addicted to their cellphones. (Roberts).

In addition, I have made a survey that had been published for college students through

their emails. The survey had two questions, first one was does social media has a negative impact

on students academic performance? Then, if you answered yes to the previous question, explain

what kind of negative impact that you have gotten from social media? 29 students have

participated in the survey. 52% they think that social media has a negative impact on them,

especially on their academic performance, the rest of the students said that social media has no

impact at all neither positive nor negative on their academic performance. The significant answer

in the survey was that social media wasted a lot of college students time. Which leads to what

called time management. Its known as one of the hardest tasks that students face during their

college life. As a college student, you have other responsibilities besides time management such

as learning how to be an independent person and paying your bills on time. However, it should

not be a problem for those who are in their second or third year in college because by the time

they spend in college they should be able to figure how to manage their own time. For freshman

students its something hard to manage. US News website had made a list of tips that could help

freshmen to manage their own time. For example, manage your academic and personal life, this
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is the first thing that students should learn is how to manage them separately. Balance your

courses on each semester which means that dont take all the difficult classes in one semester and

leave the easy ones on another semester. Learn how to make a schedule for your daily work and

stick with it.

Many studies have talked about the impact of social media on college students and how

social media reflects their own academic performance. A study made by Wilfred Lau Effect of

Social Media Usage and Social Media Multitasking on the Academic Performance of University

Studies examined the relationship between social media and students academic performance.

The study found that social media has a negative impact on students grade point average. The

significant point that was found in this study was the idea of multitasking between social media

and studying. Students attend to multitask because they think it could help them while they are

stressed, but the study shows that has a significantly negative effect on their academic

performance.

Furthermore, social media has taken many hours from students that they could have used

for other purposes. For example, developing their skills such as reading, doing exercises, and

participating in university activities. Secondly, the distraction that social media causes on

students. As a college student you need to focus during your classes and when you do your

assignments, but when students use social media during their classes they will lose their focus

and they will be distracted and maybe lose some important information that the instructor has

assigned during that time. Thirdly, the health problem that comes with using social media for

students such as lack of sleeping, some students check their social media accounts before they go

to sleep. That might take many hours which they could have used in a better ways like sleeping

and preparing their bodies for the next day. Finally, the more students use social media the worse
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they become in their real social life, for example, when a student use to communicate with

people through messages they will become afraid or lazy of communicating face to face.

Some students use social media to make different identities that their society did not

accept, for example, when someone comes from low budget family and all their friends are from

higher budget families. They will try to pretend that they are from the same level of their friends

families in social media so girls can like them, but they will never meet them because they might

find the reality of their way of living. Which is completely not wrong. Therefore, social media is

the safest place that offers those identities and gives the students the opportunity to say whatever

they want without any judgment from anyone. Thats why students try to express their feelings in

social media rather than talking to their friends or some members of their family such as parents

or siblings. Which is why people use social media because they can change their identities and

manipulate people with their perfect side rather than showing all other sides, and thats why most

people on social media look perfect!

However, the positive side of social media is strongly related to academic purposes.

According to Bruce Hopkins article Impact of Social Media on Education published by

Academic Apps. The positive impact of social media has been found for students, but it does not

outweigh the negative impact. As education has been developed, using technology is essential

for students to perform better in their academic classes. As a result, they found the positive side

of social media that could help students in so many things such as finding more reliable sources,

which all the professors require, and being a college student, you should be able to find those

reliable sources. In addition, one of the problems that students face while finding sources is

plagiarism. Which some students could copy from the internet and it will lead them to some

serious problems such as being expelled from school or getting an F in the class that they
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plagiarized in. Also, find online classes which could possibly help you with some of the difficult

classes, and it helps a team that working on a project to communicate with each other to meet up

in the library or a place through applications such as WhatsApp or Facebook.

Social media increases students knowledge about things that they have assigned to do

for an assignment. In other words, when you do an assignment most likely you will do a research

in the beginning and read about the subject from many sources to understand it. This process

increases students knowledge about the subject that they are looking for. Sometimes students

become expert about those subjects from the information they have gathered from reading about

it. For example, in this assignment, I have researched a lot of databases and read many articles to

get a better understanding of the topic.

Some platforms in social media have offered new ways of learning that help students

during their college life. For example, YouTube is one of the newest Platforms that offers a new

way of learning to students. Many channels on YouTube are actually run by teachers who

dedicate their time to teach students through this platform. You can learn any subject for any

class you want in YouTube, and what is significant about it is all of the videos are for free and

easy to approach in anytime. Also, Twitter has been found as one of the most effective tools to

engage students with their school material.

Also, I have been in a situation that social media helped me to gather information about

attending the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. I went on Twitter to find students who

are studying in UNCC and I asked them about the university. They have helped me and some of

them have become my friends in Charlotte.

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The previous studies showed that the main difference between the negative and positive

impact is how they impact on a college student. The negative side effects everything around a

college student, for example, their social life, health problems, lack of time management, and

wasting time. On the other hand, the positive side effects the academic purposes such as finding

online courses, getting help from other to help you with assignments or gathering information,

and providing alternative ways of learning.

What can students do to reduce the negative impact?

First of all, it is impossible to stop college students from using social media, but what you

can do is teaching college students how to deal with social media with minimizing the negative

impact. One of the most efficient ways to reduce the negative impact is to believe that there is a

negative impact you are getting from social media, then consider avoiding it. Firstly, make a

calendar for your daily work and how much achievement you have to reach daily, then follow

that calendar which slightly would help you to reduce the wasting time problem. Secondly, give

yourself the amount of time daily to check social media. In this case, you are able to control the

time of using social media and focusing on your school material. Thirdly, always remember why

you came to college. Setting goals could help to know what the right thing to do, study or being

on social media? Aiming yourself toward your goals could help you to reduce the use of social

media and the negative impact that comes with it.

The process of these steps might take a long time to make an impact on students.

However, students have different ways of studying, some students like to study alone, and some

like to study in groups or public places. The same thing for reducing the amount spent on social

media. College students should find their own way of solving it individually. The way I use for

checking my social media accounts is to set up a time for it, I do not do it all the time.
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Another way that could change the habit of wasting time is to try to consume the time on

social media in other choices. In other words, try to spend your time on going to the gym or

playing sports like football and basketball. Also, reading books about your major in school.

These activities would be more efficient.

Increase your social life, enjoy being a human and communicate with people face to face

more often. That helps to reduce the communication through social media which reduces the

amount of time you spend on texting people.

In conclusion, Social media has become one of the most important things in many people

lives. Companies now are doing commercials on social media, not on TV anymore. Also, the

way to approach social media is becoming easier than ever, you only need a smartphone to be on

social media. However, the impact of social media is what becoming the issue, whether positive

or negative impact. The tons of studies that have been written on this subject are still concerned

about what might happen in the future. Every day a new application comes to be popular on

social media that could make a different impact on our lives and more importantly on teenagers

lives. Snapchat one of those applications that are making a huge impact on me personally and on

teenagers because that idea of the app is to send a picture or a video that stays only for 10

seconds. It helped me stay in touch with my friends who are overseas, and I can show them what

is in the US. However, some teenagers are using it in the wrong way such as sending

inappropriate pictures which might go in public and ruin their reputation. The impact of social

media is not a theory its a fact, but what people need to learn is how they can use social media

with the minimum possible of a negative impact. Eliminating social media is not a solution and it

will never be. College students need social media to make their education much better, they only

need to be taught how to use it properly.

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Works Cited:

Hopkins, Bruce. Impact of Social Media on Education. Academia Apps,

https://www.academiaapps.com/impact-social-media-education/ Accessed 1 November 2017.

Jacobs, Lynn F and Jeremy Hyman. Top 12 Time-Management Tips. U.S. News, 14 October 2009,

https://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/professors-guide/2009/10/14/top-12-time-

management-tips Accessed 31 October 2017.

Lau, Wilfred. Effects of Social Media Usage and Social Media Multitasking on the Academic

Performance of University Students. Computers in Human Behavior, Vol. 68, 2017, pp. 286-291

http://www.sciencedirect.com.librarylink.uncc.edu/science/article/pii/S0747563216307841?_rd

oc=1&_fmt=high&_origin=gateway&_docanchor=&md5=b8429449ccfc9c30159a5f9aeaa92ffb

Accessed 10 October 2017

Percentage of U.S. Population with a Social Media Profile from 2008 to 2017. Statista. 2017,

https://www.statista.com/statistics/273476/percentage-of-us-population-with-a-social-

network-profile/Accessed 31 October 2017

Roberts, Jim. Cellphone Addiction is an Increasingly Realistic Possibility, Baylor Study of College

students Reveals. Baylor University, 27 August. 2014,

https://www.baylor.edu/mediacommunications/news.php?action=story&story=145864

Accessed 30 October 2017

Should Parents Monitor Their Childrens Social Media. TeenSafe, 15 May. 2017,

https://www.teensafe.com/blog/parents-monitor-childrens-social-media/ Accessed 1

November 2017.
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Social Media Facts. Pew Research Center, 12 January 2017, http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-

sheet/social-media/ Accessed 30 October 2017.