Effect of Social Media on Childrens Academic Performance - Essay Example

? Effect of Social Media on Children’s Academic Performance My of the Outline My specific research question: 1. Do levels of social media use affect children’s academic performance? A. Children are subjected to all forms of media i. Vulnerability of children’s level of development B. Less media use leads to better performance in school i. Light media users are happier ii. Overreliance of media is unhealthy iii. Overreliance on media lowers grades C. Overreliance on media degrades psychosocial development i. Parents should consult physicians ii. Parents should regulate time spent on the media A. Children are subjected to all forms of media Technological advances at this day and age have brought about a lot of changes in the way children and teens communicate socially by the use of social communication platforms such as Facebook, Blogging, Internet TV, Skype, Twitters, YouTube and MySpace and so on. Younger children are also indulged in social networking heavily. This is according to a study conducted where websites such as ClubPenguin, Poptropica, Habbo, Neopets and Stardoll have managed to register millions of users who mostly are younger children (“Your Children and the Internet: Social Networking Sites”). According to the study by the Kaiser Family Foundation (2010, January), more than eight in ten, that is 84%, of young people now have fast Internet access at home, this has increased from a record of 74% in 2004 and 47% in 1999. As a result, they spend more time online when they are at the comfort of their homes. Computer usage has also sky rocketed where many homes now own a computer, so as to get access to the Internet. Seven in ten 8- to 18-year-olds go online; this can be translated to about 70%. Where home use if around 57% whereas going online at school, in the library, community centre is about 20%. These networking tools have brought about a lot of time focus by the children and they lose focus of their studies and education which is quite important too. At this point internet being easily affordable and readily available and the occurrence of smart phones, tablets and other internet enabled gadgets; children are prone to be subjected to all they would want to access at just a click away. i. Vulnerability of children’s level of development According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (2001), "Children are influenced by media–they learn by observing, imitating, and making behaviors their own". The continuous access to the internet by children has caused them to be vulnerable to a lot of things. For instance, children development has been hindered to a capacity that is quite alarming. Children are influenced by what they see on the television, magazines and the likes to a point they can be able to depict exactly what they see others doing. This also makes them vulnerable in the fact that social media such as the internet, texting and networking can lead to reduced concentration and academic performance. This has definitely led to reduced grades and progressive dependence on social media has shown that the same children who spend more time on TV than physical activities tend to be slower at grasping facts. In addition to that, exposure to unrated adult television has been noticed to lead to increased exposure to violence or sexual content and this in turn lead to aggressive behavior and thoughts respectively and other factors such as fear and less helping in house chores (“Anti-Social Networking: How do texting and social media affect our children? A panel by CSC clinicians at the Nightingale Bamford School”). Renee Hobbs, an advocate for media literacy education commented on that issue stating, “Just because our students can use media and technology doesn't mean they are effective at critically analyzing and evaluating the messages they receive. Students need a set of skills to ask important questions about what they watch, see, listen to and read. Often called media literacy, these skills include the ability to critically analyze media messages and the ability to use different kinds of communication technologies for self-expression and communication” (“Influence on Children Media: History of Media for Children, General Considerations, Studies of Media Influence, Domains of Influence, Recommendations”). Lack of media literate skills can cause young children to be vulnerable to social media vulnerabilities if not taken into proper consideration by parents and guardians. If parents can be in a position to distinguish what their children can watch and what they cannot then children will be able to depict what is right to watch and what is not from their parents. B. Less media use leads to better performance in school The level of social media, where high or low as a variable, always depicts the way children and teens perform in school. Heavy media users definitely lack time to focus on school related matters as compared to light media users. For example, an average American child spends a total of more than 20 hours per week viewing TV (“Influence on Children Media: History of Media for Children, General Considerations, Studies of Media Influence, Domains of Influence, Recommendations”). This will in turn translate to less activity for recreation at school and thus lead to lifestyle diseases and illnesses and this will definitely impact in their performance in school. In addition to that, these children take less time doing school work or even just go and copy their assignment from others in school. Furthermore, children who spend all their time involved in social media like texting find it hard to concentrate in class and have shorter attention spans. Again, the short message texting habit that children have adopted has affected their communication with words such as lol, lmao, smh where these words have replaced the normal English language thus a decline in their languages performance. Kairen Cullen, an educational psychologist described social networking as a complex subject. This is because children are so drawn into social communication at every opportunity that they get. She added that, ''Social networking has become so much the norm, for adults and children alike, that non-participation can result in feeling excluded or even socially ostracized. 'The time invested in social media versus real life interpersonal interaction can detract from that available for real human contact and contribute to delayed and/or distorted social and emotional development” (“Social networking: teachers blame Facebook and Twitter for pupils' poor grades”, 2010). According to the study by the Kaiser Family Foundation (2010, January), heavy media users had a higher probability to get poor grades in school, thus another reason why social media should be regulated in school and at home. With all these pieces of information, it can be concluded that, less media is the way to go and its restriction implementation by parents and guardians will engage children in more recreation activities, make them focus on education and stay away from other factors such as extreme social networking chats that deteriorate their language skills. This will ultimately increase their productivity in school and overall performance. i. Light media users are happier A new study survey conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation entitled Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 10- Year-Olds seeks to uncover the different types of users. The study also reveals that children spend more than 71/2 hours a day with electronic media, up from about six hours in 1999. The study sought to divide media users into three categories. This includes heavy, moderate and light media users. According to the study by the Kaiser Family Foundation (2010, January), heavy users are those who were subjected to more than 16 hours of media content in a usual day (21% of all 8- to 18-year-olds); moderate users were those who spent between 3 to 16 hours (63%); and light media users spend less than 3 hours daily(17%). As a result, variables such as age, race and parental education and single vs. two-parent households led to the conclusion that light social media users have higher levels of personal contentment and happiness as compared with heavy media users who were prone to be discontented from the society, bored with their surroundings and school dissatisfaction and this impacted their life by being unhappy because of low grades, fewer physical friends as most of the time they are secluded from the society and often get in trouble with their parents and teachers because of lower school performance. ii. Overreliance on media lowers grades Overreliance on media has an impact of lowering grades. This is because if children focus on the media such as the internet to search for answers and get answers from there rather than think of possible solutions to a problem, then this hinders creativity, problem solving and decision making. Selwyn (2009) described that fears abound within some sections of the education community that Social Networking Sites (SNSs) could contribute to the intellectual and scholarly de-powering of a ‘Google generation’ of learners incapable of independent critical thought. This clearly states that children are prone to completely depend on social media such as the internet and mostly ‘Google’ for research and any other decision or critical thinking work. Despite all this, SNSs are believed to have the capability to change the system of education and to scale the heights of achievement by motivating learners who are primarily passive observers of the educational process as quoted from Selwyn (2009). According to the study by the Kaiser Family Foundation (2010, January), nearly half, which is 47% of all heavy media users, said they usually get grades that range in C or lower as compared to the 23% of light media users. On the other hand, according to Okoro (2012), electronic communication and social networking are effective and useful tools in the process of teaching and learning and have increasingly improved the quality of students’ learning outcomes in higher education in recent years. The system encourages and supports students’ active engagement, collaboration, and participation in class activities and provides a process of information dissemination in a unique method that yields measurable results (“Social Networking and Pedagogical Variations: An Integrated Approach for Effective Interpersonal and Group Communications Skills Development”, 2012). Other factors associated with the detrimental of academic grades are focused on the fact that, children who engage in too much media association are bound to be pulled away from the society, that is there exists heightened disengagement, alienation and disconnection of learners from education and to the detrimental effect that social networking tools have on them and their education as cited from Brabazon (2007). This can be concluded that, relying on media for research is not bad, the problem comes in when children over rely on media for all their research and even simple tasks that require though are still ‘Googled’ from the internet. Thus the over reliance on the media definitely lowers grades. iii. Overreliance of media is unhealthy An average American child spends a total of more than 20 hours per week viewing TV (“Influence on Children Media: History of Media for Children, General Considerations, Studies of Media Influence, Domains of Influence, Recommendations”). This will in turn translate to less activity for recreation at school and thus lead to lifestyle diseases and illnesses and this will definitely impact in their performance in school. In addition to that, these children take less time doing school work or even just go and copy their assignment from others in school. Concerns have been raised from the fact that too much media exposure leads to passiveness rather that activity. In addition to that, too much exposure has been related to hyperactivity by the children. Another factor of concern is that the social media contains a lot of advertisements on drug related products for example tobacco, alcohol and so on. It is said that tobacco companies spend close to $6 billion per year where as alcohol manufacturers spend up to $2 billion per year in their advertisements in the social media. On the other hand, movies, music videos and television programs also happen to portray their one of their character using one of those products. Thus if children spend too much time o the social media looking at these advertisements, they are prone to give it a try and check whether what the advertisement is saying is true or not despite the effort that the advertisers place on these products claiming that they are harmful to the health of an individual (“Influence on Children Media: History of Media for Children, General Considerations, Studies of Media Influence, Domains of Influence, Recommendations”). According to the study by the Kaiser Family Foundation (2010, January), heavy media users spent less time exercising or being physically involved in activities as compared to lighter media users. A solution to this would be the responsibility of parents and guardians to replace the total time spent of media with social activities, volunteering activities at church or in the community so that these children will have a chance to socialize and engage with others and this will definitely lead to a better and healthy lifestyle. Specific Research Question(s) The main and specific research question that the paper will aim at finding its answers is: Do levels of social media use affect children’s academic performance? Method Participants In social media research, measuring of the entire population is rarely possible with a sample frame which defines a population to that extent sample is drawn and it is used to represent the whole population. I have used participant observation to describe various levels of media uses and their effects on academic performance. This tool has also helped me in collecting the information I need on how different media levels affect academic performance. Participant observers include a wide variety of people who include school going age who could have been influenced by various media levels including TVs, Radios and the use of internet on computers. In this research, the participant will be organized into strata that will be randomly selected as a sample for the research and used in collecting the information needed about the topic of research. Participants whom will be used to conduct a research will be basically pupils and students whom will be organized into sampling strata from which I will employ different sampling methods to help in collecting the information. The participant selected will depend on the technique of method of sampling probability which consist of various sampling techniques. Some of the techniques that will be employed in the participant observation to collect the information about the effect of the level of media on academic performance will be random, stratified, and systematic and cluster sampling. Data collection procedures that are used in descriptive research may be very open. In order to curb this problem; there is employment of highly refined categories of behavior and yield quantitative data. This research may always put more attention to the individual subjects and also describes the characteristics greatly. Therefore in this case, if variation in the data occurs, they are studied and hence is called case study. Measures The samples that the participants can be grouped can be divided into independent and dependent variable. Different surveys can be used to measure these variables. In the research, there are factors which depend on the existence of others that is a dependent variable for example the academic performance in this case. On the other hand, there are other factors which can exist without dependence on others that is the independent factor for example the various levels of media which affect the level of performance among the students. In research measuring, a suitable survey or test should be used to measure and describe the basic information about the research problem. To achieve this, a small sample survey was conducted. In this case, a sample was taken to be a community that is bordering an institution of learning for example likes at school. The population of the community under survey was then stratified so that it could be easier to involve them during sampling. Students who had an access to various medium levels such as TV were chosen at random and questioned. Another stratum which is composed of students who could not get accessed by any of the media level was also questioned. The two settlements were analyzed and a conclusion was made. It was therefore concluded that different level of social media such as Facebook, Twitter, TV, radios among others affect the level of performance in students with students that come from well off families performing poorer. Procedures This is a detail of how the study survey was conducted so that anybody who wishes to reproduce this study can find procedures or steps to follow in order to end up with the same survey. The participants mainly involved in this survey are the students. Also we have teachers and doctors as participant with each playing different roles in conducting the study. Different families set up were considered on the basis of poverty level and the class. Most families that are suitable for the study are those found at the periphery of schools and colleges. Teachers and other persons in this study are used to as a way of increasing the validity of the study as they help researchers to have a better understanding of the context and phenomenon of the study. The various ways used to collect information were through interviewing, document analysis, surveys, questionnaire and any other quantitative methods. My research study can be used to determine and research on the methods of data collection as it was guided by the type of questions for the study. After an analysis of the information collected from the study, it showed that there is a great reduction in performance in students a result of being engaged in social media activities thereby consuming their time and loss of efforts their teachers have put on to ensure good performance. Teachers played the role of providing information on the progress of the students in class as well as their hobbies. Those students whose hobbies included the watching, making friends among other related activities with this, continued to register a negative performance not because they have exploited their potential fully, but because they dedicate more of their time on social media than doing a constructive class work activity. Plan of Data Analysis Do levels of social media use affect children’s academic performance? The right statistical procedure to be used for my study is provided in the chart which gives an understanding of the actual use of the statistical procedures. Statistical procedures can be used to determine dependable variable which is the variable that I want to measure. For example, in the new approach on students’ academic achievement we can use GPA and the final academic grade that is attained to be used as a measure of academic achievement. The dependent variable then becomes GPA and final exams. The plan of data analysis section is based on the information I collect through my survey because it describe my plan analysis from the surveys and other measures. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) is one of the statistical procedures that can be conducted to examine whether survey mode affects respondents. This happens when a self- designed survey is used to assess participants' understanding. When an investigation has been done on the skills and understanding of a person technology, statistical procedure is then used to design a correlation matrix that demonstrates the relations between the experience index of technology and the respondent to the skills. References American Academy of Pediatrics. (2001). Media Violence. Pediatrics 108:1222–1226. Bloxham, Andy. (2010, November). The Telegraph. Social networking: teachers blame Facebook and Twitter for pupils' poor grades. Web. Retrieved from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8142721/Social-networking-teachers-blame-Facebook-and-Twitter-for-pupils-poor-grades.html Brabazon, T. 2007. The University of Google. Aldershot: Ashgate. Diaz, Yamalis, Evans, Lori, Gallagher, Richard. Anti-Social Networking: How do texting and social media affect our children? A panel by CSC clinicians at the Nightingale Bamford School. Web. Retrieved from: http://www.aboutourkids.org/articles/antisocial_networking_how_do_texting_social_media_affect_our_children_panel_discussion_csc_ Education.State University. Influence on Children Media: History of Media for Children, General Considerations, Studies of Media Influence, Domains of Influence, Recommendations. Web. Retrieved from: http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/2212/Media-Influence-on-Children.html Lind, M. R., & Zmud, R. W. (1995). Improving Interorganizational Effectiveness through Voice Mail Facilitation of Peer-to-Peer Relationships. Organization Science, 6(4), 445-461. Netmums. Your Children and the Internet: Social Networking Sites. Web. Retrieved from: http://www.netmums.com/your-child/tweens-teens-secondary-schools/safe-surfing-on-the-internet/your-children-and-the-internet-social-networking-s Okoro, Ephraim. (2012). Social Networking and Pedagogical Variations: An Integrated Approach for Effective Interpersonal and Group Communications Skills Development. American Journal of Business Education, 5(2), 219-224. The Clute Institute. Orhon, E. (2009). Educacion en medios en Turquia: hacia una red de actores multiples. (Spanish). Comunicar, 17(32), 157-166. doi:10.3916/c32-2009-02-014 Selwyn, N. (2009, June). Faceworking: Exploring students? education-related use of Facebook. Learning Media and Technology, Volume 34, No2, (158). Seung-Won, Y., & Doo Hun, L. (2007). Strategic Blending: A Conceptual Framework to Improve Learning and Performance. International Journal on E-Learning, 6(3), 475-489. Soep, E. (2012). Generacion y recreacion de contenidos digitales por los jovenes: implicaciones para la alfabetizacion mediatica. (Spanish). Comunicar, 19(38), 93-100. Victoria, J.R., Ulla, F., & Donald, F. R. (2010, January). Kaiser Family Foundation Study. Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 10- Year-Olds. Read More