Impact of facebook on the student performance free essay sample

The internet has significantly increased the potential for individuals to communicate with each other no matter where they may be located. It has also broadened the number of social relationships that an individual may carry on at any one time. Social networking sites (SNS) have become instrumental for providing free, user friendly access for communicating with others over the internet. Face book has quickly grown to become one of the most popular SNS worldwide. Face book currently has over 1 billion active users worldwide and on average 584 million people use Face book daily [2]. Ellison et al. point out that the core demographic segment of 18 to 24 year olds is growing the fastest at a rate of 74% year on year [6]. Face book was originally created as a vehicle for students to create and maintain social ties that were relevant to the university experience [6]. Today, Face book has become the SNS of choice for high school and college students. Within the college community it is difficult to find a student who is not on Face book. Ellison et al. , report that in 2007, as many as 94 percent of undergraduate students in the United States were Face book users [6]. Not only does social media have wide spread use among college students, the amount of time that students spend on Social media is on the increase. On average, users in the aggregate spent more than 10. 5 billion minutes per day on their personal computers logged on to Social media during January of 2012. Aggregate minutes per day increased 57% and average minutes per user per day increased by 14% in January 2012 as compared to January 2011 Given that a very large percentage of college students use Social media and the amount of time that they are spending logged on to Social media, the question arises as whether Social media use negatively impacts academic performance. To date, the research on the relationship between time spent on Social media and academic performance has provided mixed results. One motivation for this study is to test whether there is a negative relationship between Social media use and academic performance. Given the popularity of Social media among College students, researchers have begun to focus on individual factors that may be related to the amount of time that students spend on Face book. One approach has been to consider the influence of personality variables on Social media use [19]. A second motivation of this paper is to investigate whether personality variables are related to Social media use Problem statement Impact of social media on the performance of students depend on usage of social networking sites like Face book, YouTube and twitter but personality traits of users also have great role on the usage of social networking sites and academic performance. SOCIAL MEDIA (independent variable) Social media are said to be a general name for Websites that permit users to share content, Media, photographs etc. The common ones are the famous networking sites like MySpace, Friend ster, Face book, YouTube, Flicker, Photo bucket, etc. They are therefore described as media for social interactions which employs highly accessible and large communication apparatus. It is a web based and mobile technology which allows communication to become active and interactive dialogue. According to Kaplan etal, it is a group of Internet-based applications that builds on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2. 0 which as he says, allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content[6*]. Some of the advantages of social media or the characteristics that make it distinct from other media-traditional/industrial electronic and print are: 1. They are easily accessible and relatively cheaper even sometimes free. 2. It allows everyone, including individuals to publish and access information unlike the industrial media for which vital resources are required for publishing information. 3. It is a decentralized media with minimum hierarchy which is distinguished by multiple points of production and uses. It requires less specialized skill and technical training, once access is gained into it, it could be operated or used by anybody with less difficulty. 5. It guarantees prompt and immediate response. However, since a good number of traditional/industrial media have begun to use similar facilities, this may not continue to be a distinctive feature of social media for a long time. 6. Social media unlike industrial/traditional one is ductile and malleable. Errors in information could be corrected with immediate effect by way of comments and editing TIME AS SUBVARIABLE: Further examination of whether the time spent on the Internet was or was not related to studying or specific academic content is restricted. A more thorough examination of Internet activities may help explain the interesting findings that the majority of FB users and nonusers reporting using comparable percentages of daily Internet use, yet the amount of time spent studying differs dramatically (i. e. , and GPA). For example, do the students logging 1 to 2 hours per day on the Internet access and stay online inone full block of time, or is 1 to 2 hours per day spread out across several waking hours while students are engaged in other activities? How this has an impact on a student’s study time is difficult to decipher without knowing the specifics of a student’s Internet use. Another issue to consider is the difference in how the variables were measured in the survey. Hours spent studying was polled for weekly use, and Internet use was surveyed as a daily average. More specifically with regards to how students use the Internet, if a student is engaged in their daily Internet use in one block of time during the day, and that block of time is concurrent with study time, this may support the crux of the multitasking supposition in this article. One question that comes to mind is if for the FB nonusers, time spent on the Internet, if not academically-related, would produce similar results as in the FB use GPA/study time relationship in the current study. If general Internet activity was done concurrently with studying, based in the multitasking literature, the logical answer would be yes. Also, related to this is that though total Internet time usage is equivalent, FB users spent less of the time remaining outside of class studying than nonusers. They also report spending more time on social extracurricular activities yet less time on working for pay. This opens the question of whether FB is a cause or is rather a result of the fact that FB users differ from non users in a fundamental way. Facebook  ® and Academic Performance 28 Another interesting descriptive finding was that a strong majority of FB users claimed to use their accounts either daily or multiple times per day. One question that emerges from this is what exactly is meant by daily or multiple times per day. Does this indicate that FB users log onto FB and leave it open all day, or that they log in and out several times a day? Related to multitasking, does this mean that a user logs onto FB while studying, or begins studying while being logged on, leaving FB open the entire duration of study? Facebook and academic performance: In 2009 a draft manuscript suggested that Facebook use might be related to lower academic achievement in college and graduate school (Karpinski, 2009). As with claims of dangers from older media, a recent study (and corresponding press release) indicating that Facebook use and collegiate grade point averages (GPA) were negatively correlated generated a great deal of media hype (Karpinski, 2009). Kolek and Saunders [12] reported that they found no relationship between Facebook use and academic performance. High levels of Facebook use may be related to a reduction in academic performance among college students. (Karipinski and Duberstein (10) and kirschner and karipinski). The major implication of this study is the finding that Facebook use is negatively related to academic performance. The nature of the relationship may be far more complex than the simple assumption that students who spend more time on Facebook also spend less time studying and completing academic work. Time on Facebook may replace activities that are not of an academic nature but none the less may have an impact on academic performance such as face to face communications with peers or the number of hours that students sleep. Personality and Facebook Use: In spite of the popularity of Facebook, it is only in the last few years that research has emerged that consider the relationship between personality variables and Facebook use [5]. Most of these studies have focused on personality and the types of activities that users engage in on Facebook rather than the time spent on Facebook. Personality traits are defined as an individual’s dispositions or tendencies that lead to certain attitudinal and behavioral patterns across situations [3]. The Five-Factor Model (FFM) is the most widely accepted model of personality and has emerged as the unifying theory for the study of personality [8]. The FFM is based on the theory that an individual’s personality may be evaluated by determining how they rank on five bipolar factors: neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness and conscientiousness [8]. Each of these factors integrate numerous narrow traits that had previous been applied across numerous domains with limited success. These basic tendencies are inborn and developed throughout one’s lifespan, influencing an individual’s thoughts, feelings and actions [13]. Neuroticism refers to a person’s emotional stability. Individuals who are high on neuroticism often feel anxious, angry, and sad and cope poorly with stress. Individuals who are low on neuroticism are stable, even tempered and manage stress well. People who score high on neuroticism may be more inclined to spend time on Facebook because they may try to make themselves look as attractive as possible [14] or alternatively because Facebook enables neurotic personalities to take longer to contemplate what they are going to say as opposed to face to face contact [14, 18]. Extraversion represents an individual’s level of sociability and outgoingness. Extraverts take an energetic approach towards the outside world and can be generally described as sociable, active, assertive and expressing positive emotions. Introverts tend to be withdrawn, less active and express less positive emotions. There are two competing views of the relationship between extraversion and Facebook use. On the one hand, extroverts are predicted to spend more time on Facebook because it is another platform for them to communicate with friends and contacts made off-line. On the other hand, introverts may prefer to communicate using Facebook because it allows them to compensate for their lack of interpersonal skills [14]. Openness to experience refers to the extent to which an individual is willing to explore new situations. Individuals who are open to experience generally prefer variety, novel experiences, and are intellectually curious. Individuals who are low in openness are typically conservative, prefer uniformity and are intellectually disinterested. Individuals who score high in openness may be more inclined to spend time on Facebook because of the novel ways in which they may be able to communicate with others and their openness to new experiences [4, 14, 18]. Agreeableness reflects the extent to which an individual engages in and endorses interpersonal cooperation. Agreeable individuals are friendly to others, and tend to be social, warm and trusting whereas disagreeable individuals are less pleasant to others, argumentative, uncooperative and harsh. Individuals who score high in agreeableness tend to be amenable to entering relationships however there is no compelling reason why they would do so in an online environment [14]. Individuals who score low in agreeableness may be less inclined to use Facebook to avoid having to be sociable to others with whom they communicate [4, 18]. Conscientiousness refers to the extent to which an individual is organized, careful and shows self-control. Conscientious individuals have control over their impulses and are orderly, diligent and strive to achieve goals. Unconscientiously individuals are predisposed toward acting impulsively, being disorganized and tend to procrastinate on tasks [8]. Individuals who score high on conscientiousness may spend less time on Facebook because they may perceive time spent on Facebook to avoid distraction from achieving their goals.