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The impact of social media on the student academic achievement

March 2019

Authors:

National Institute of Business Management, Sri Lanka

Today, in a dynamic technological environment, it is difficult to determine the impact of social media on the student academic achievement. With the rate of technological domination in the education industry, the old pattern of teaching methodologies is obsolescing day by day. It is essential to study how new technologies assist for the teaching and student's education as the younger generation always having technological approach than the older generation. The objective of this research is to identify the how social media influence to student academic achievement. The Questionnaires were distributed through Facebook and E-mails, to find out whether social media impact students education or not. The findings indicate that there is no relationship between social media and student education.

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Balalle Himendra; International Journal of Advance Research, Ideas and Innovations in Technology

ISSN: 2454-132X

Impact factor: 4.295

(Volume 4, Issue 4)

Available online at: www.ijariit.com

The impact of social media on the student academic achievement

Dr. Himendra Balalle

himendrab@ymail.com

ABSTRACT

Today, in a dynamic technological environment, it is difficult to determine the impact of social media on the student academic

achievement. With the rate of technological domination in the education industry, the old pattern of teaching methodologies is

obsolescing day by day. It is essential to study how new technologies assist for the teaching and student's education as the

younger generation always having technological approach than the older generation. The objective of this research is to identify

the how social media influence to student academic achievement. The Questionnaires were distributed through Facebook and

E-mails, to find out whether social media impact students education or not. The findings indicate that there is no relationship

between social media and student education.

Keywords— Student education, Social media, Education, The younger generation, Academic achievement

1. INTRODUCTION

There are several definitions for social media. Cambridge dictionary defines social media as "forms of media that allow people to

communicate and share information using the internet or mobile phones."

As we know, the social media is a computer-based technology that facilitates to share the ideas, information and the making of

virtual networks and communities. Social media is working on an internet-based and make easy on electronic communication

between people in interesting content, such as text, videos, and photos, etc. Students engage with social media via computer, tablet

or smartphone via web-based software or application, often utilizing it for communication.

Two type of social media users can be identified as digital natives and digital immigrants. Digital natives were born after 1980, they

came to this world when the digital era has existed. The digital immigrants are the ones who were born before 1980 and adapted

their lives to digital media (Anton Son and Christopher, 2014).

As the students, in this research paper is selected undergraduate students between the ages of 18 to 25. Facebook, YouTube, Google,

and many others are considered as social media platforms that will be discussed in the findings of this research.

We have to understand that the younger generation is the leaders of the future. They will lead our country, economy in the global

marketplace. Therefore, they must be well educated to be able to impact this world and make Sri Lanka a better country on the

international roadmap. Therefore, this research has conducted about the different areas they must be exposed to use better education.

This research aims to identify the frequency of student’s social media usage, and whether it has any effect on their educational

achievement.

2. LITERATURE REVIEW

The role of digital media in education has not widely been discussed in Si Lanka. As it is generally the case when talking about the

relationships between social media and general educational practices, there is a contradiction between, those who see the old

education system is good than the new technology, and, those who can understand the advantages of such media for teaching and

learn in student education.

Victoria Rideout states that student uses the social media as an entertainment media rather than applying for the educational

purposes. She also further mentioned that an American child spends on average of seven and a half hours a day just for having fun

with the media (Rideout, 2012, p. 5). For instance, users can be listening to music, sending a tweet as well as posting on Facebook.

Rideout says, that "since social media is seven days a week, unlike school or having a full-time job, over the years the amount of

time one could spend over the internet has exploded" (Rideout, 2012, p. 5).

Apart from the increase in overall time spent consuming media is the finding that youth consume 20% of their media on a “thir d

screen” (other than TV and computer): mobile smartphones and game consoles (Rideout et al., 2010).) Found that 66% of children

Balalle Himendra; International Journal of Advance Research, Ideas and Innovations in Technology

owned their cell phones and 76% held their iPod/ music players. Fifty-eight percent of 12-year-olds now own a cellphone (Lenhart,

Purcell, Smith, & Zickuhr, 2010), up from 18% in 2004. A growing number (73%) of online 8- to 18-year-olds use social network

sites (Lenhart, Purcell, et al., 2010)

Abelardo Pardo mentioned that he believes the technology makes a platform for the innovation and allows its users to express their

opinions about how they feel towards the information is being published. Also further, he adds that" social media is also a platform

that allows students to interact with one another, with their teachers and communities that share their same education. Pardo also

states that these types of interaction are an essential part of how humans learn." (Pardo, 2013, p. 45)

3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This research aim is to find the impact of social media on the Student Education of the younger generation in Sri Lanka.

Questionnaires were distributed through the social media platform, and the sample size is 100 male-female/ students and age of 18-

25 in Colombo city.

Social media usage had taken as independent variable and student education achievements as dependent variable.

Null and Alternative hypothesis developed as follows.

If there is no relationship between social media usage and student education

This would be statistically expressed by

H 0: ρ = 0

The alternate hypotheses for the above null

HA: ρ < 0 (The correlation is negative.)

The Likert Scale was used where the respondents were asked to rate them from 1-5, according to the level they use the platform

most; one being the most and five being the least.

The questionnaires consisted of questions regarding usage hours of social media per day and for what it is used for. Other questions

included the number of study hours per day, whether they use social media for studies or not, and if yes, how do use it to study and

which platforms in use.

The data obtained were analyzed by using statistical software, applied the cross tabulation method to measure the impact and effect

of two things.

4. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

The demographics were 58% females and 42% males. The majority of the respondents were between 18 and 21 years old, and they

made up 72% of the respondents. The majority were from first-year undergraduate level, which is 86% of the respondents.

The respondents were asked to mention their average marks at the exam 61% of the respondents were between the 50-60% grade

ranges, 20% were of the 60-70% grade range, and 10% were of the 70-80% grade range, leaving 9% of the grade range above 80

68% mostly used Facebook, and 48% used Google. The other platforms were, Instagram 27% used most frequent. Twitter 22% and

YouTube 51%, Viber and WhatsApp 18 % and 21% accordingly.

The students mentioned that they are using social media for studies; furthermore, they have social media groups to exchange the

ideas within the class. Therefore, most of them use social media in education and, which assists to uplift the knowledge and finally

student education performance.

52% percent are using social media 3-4 hours per day and entire time is not used for education purposes. They will have entertaining

and fun during the browsing social media.

5. CONCLUSION

The objective of this research was to find out the social media usage impact for the student educational achievement. based on

research findings, it is clear that social media does not significantly impact school student’s studies, because the correlation between

spending hours on social media and student examination marks are not positively correlated. The student spent fewer hours on social

media had excellent scores on the examination.

6. LIMITATIONS

The limitations in this research is the small number of the sample used, and it is limited to Colombo. Therefore, we are unable to

apply the result to the entire country. Also, there is no research conducted in this area in the country.

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Balalle Himendra; International Journal of Advance Research, Ideas and Innovations in Technology

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