NAME: ABUBAKAR SADIQ MUSTAPHA

Due date: 28/3/2024

COURSE TITLE: Freshman Composition II.III

COURSE NUMBER: WRI 102.3

Instructor/facilitator/lecturer Name: Dr. Brian Reed

Question: Long Research Paper.

Negative Effects/Impacts of Social Media on College Students

Over 98% of college-aged students are on social media. Social media boomed in 2009 and has not

slowed down since. College-aged students, generally between the ages of 18-22, are the first generation

to be raised in a social media-dominated world. (Zedd)

Social media started in the mid-1990s with the advent of platforms like GeoCities, Classmates.com,

and SixDegrees.com. While instant messaging and chat clients existed at the time, Six Degrees was

unique as it was the first online service designed for real people to connect using their actual

names. (Zedd)

Social media refers to a variety of technologies that facilitate the sharing of ideas and information

among their users. (Maya)

According to Des Wilson who is a New Zealand-born, British campaigner, political activist, businessman,

sports administrator, author and poker player. ‘’Social media allow people to easily and simply create

their own online page or profile as well as to construct and display an online network of contracts’’.
Social media can be defined as a relationship between people and networks. As stated by the author

who is an Ass professor Department of Management, Metas Adventist college, Surat Gujarat. ‘’in last 2

decades the information super highway has changed intensely. It is WWW, applications and software’s

which enables people to generate and share content with other people.it is through social media that

people now exchange their own ideas, thoughts, philosophies, pictures, personal information, videos

and so on’’. (Bakrania)

Some of the examples of social media platforms are: Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok.

Snapchat, Reddit, Pinterest. And so on. (shopify.com)

Here is the negative impact of social media on college students, and how it affects and deprived college

students toward archiving their academic goals.

To begin with, as an impact on a college students, social media consumes a lot of time of the students:

as a university or college student, a person needs much time to really focus on his or her academics, not

on social media platforms; since the advent of social media many students give a lot of their time and

attention to these platforms, more than what they give to their academics. Many college students can

be online 24/7, even during examination periods; by so doing it will definitely results to their failure in

that examination.

In addition, social media exposes college students to bad friends: through social media a student will

know many guys on campus and off campus to whom he will be engaged and begin to learn and copy

such an immoral behavior of them, and in the process he or she will drain from the initial reason why he

is in the college and begin to follow their bad footsteps, and finally result in his or her failure in an

examination. For example, college students will share a whatsApp contact, Twitter or Instagram handle,

to chat up with one another. In the process, if he meets the wrong guys a student will be introduced to
and influenced by cult groups or gay, or much other bad society in the school as a result of social media

that linked them together. (Patil)

More so, social media addiction: many of the college students are addicted to the social media

platforms, to the extent of using it even when they are in classroom, they will be busy checking their

tweets, status and messages from their family and friends. This creates a disturbance for other students

and concentration issues for them. For instance, Inability to carefully follow lectures affects their grades.

(Patil)

Also, social media causes distractions on college students: Many students have been distracted by these

platforms, from their real task, which is to fully concentrate on their studies. . As a result, social media

platforms increase students’ tendency towards non-instructive, unscrupulous and inappropriate

activities. (Patil)

Furthermore, social media introduces students to bad and anti-social Behaviors. These are actions not

acceptable in a given society. However, some of these unacceptable actions do find expression on social

networks and thereby make its users vulnerable to such. Social network websites get the attention of

some students and then divert it towards unethical and inappropriate practices. Some students, instead

of taking advantage of social media for learning purposes, have diverted their attention to erroneous

usage, which includes sexting, hacking, fraud and scams. Several cases are available where people have

committed fraud and scams through online networking. For example you will find students teaching

their fellow student on how to hack people’s account and scam them, or talking in an immoral way as a

result of what they view on social media platforms. (Subair.s)

Also, Writing and Spelling Skills Deficiency: Students generally utilize slang words or word abbreviations

on long range interpersonal communication when interacting on social media platforms. This habit has

the capacity to affect their communication skills with respect to writing and spelling. Some social media
users often depend on their smart phones for language structure and spelling check highlights. This

reduces their command of language and language use and their creative writing skills. For example an

addicted student of social media will be making some errors while writing an academic paper, like using

‘’Pls’’ instead of ‘’Please’’, ‘’Tnx’’, instead of ‘’thank you’’, and using ‘’Nvm’’ instead of ‘’Never mind’’,

‘’Gud’’ instead of ‘’Good’’, and many more social media abbreviations and shortcuts which will affect the

students’ academic performance. This problem is as a result of the use social media of that particular

learner. (Subair.s)

Dr. Linda Papadopoulos, as one of the most famous psychologists in the UK, joined Internet Matters as

an ambassador and is always available to help parents protect their children online. “Keeping posted

may also cause them to receive more negative or average reviews online instead of compliments or

compliments. Maybe they may be more likely to experience cyber bullying, which is related to severe

depression or even suicidal behavior in extreme cases.” Similarly, cyber bullying may be more common

among girls or may be more closely associated with psychological distress. (qtd.in Pang)

Someone may try to convince you as a reader that, social media has a positive impact on college

students lives. Because he believes that it makes it easy for the students to interact with one another for

group discussion and assignment if there’s any. And for the instructors to always have a general place to

send any information to the students, for example using a whatsApp goup chat; students can discuss

various things regarding their courses and instructors, which will help them to improve academically. So

by having the social media platforms, it makes the student’s life easier. But try and ask him a question.

What has happened to the college student that studied before the advent of these social media

platforms? Were they not having group discussion? Does that stop the instructors from giving out

messages and information to them? Or does that stop them from learning? The answers are no, in those

days college students learned quickly in the classroom because they could see their teachers and always
do all the needful regarding that course physically. everyone will be free to ask questions and make his

contribution to the group, while if it is online through one of the social media platforms, someone may

wish not to participate pretending that his or her network is bad or he or she does not have data, thus

that can result to the failure of the group work, because someone is not doing his or her own part,

simply because it’s not physical.

This paper discussed the impact of social media, specifically the negative impact of social media to the

college students, and how it affects their academic performance in college. social media consumes a lot

of the students time, distracts them from their studies, makes them addicted to it , to the extent of not

fully concentrating on their studies, introduces them to bad friends and anti-social behaviors and so on.

These are very important in the life of any college students. Therefore, at this junction, I call on any

college student to really think and re think again, and avoid the use of these social media platforms in

order to avoid its distraction, and graduate from college with flying colors.
Works Cited
Bakrania, Tushti .P. "Impact of Social Media on College Students." International Research Journal on
Advanced Science Hub (IRJASH) (08/ August/2020): 236.

Des Wilson, ph.D. Communication and the New Media in Nigeria . African Council for Communication
Education , 2013.

Maya, Dollarhide. "Social Media: Definition, Importance, Top Websites & Apps." internet. 2023.

accessed on 08/November/2023.

Pang, Huizhong. "The Negative Impact of Social Media on People's Lives." Proceedings of the 2021
International Conference on Social Development and Media Communication (SDMC 2021)
(2021): 557.

Patil, Mrs. Vishranti Raut and Mrs. Prafulla. "Use of Social Media in Education: Positive and Negative
impact on the students." International Journal on Recent and Innovation Trends in Computing
and Communication (n.d.).

"Top 10 Most Popular Social Media Platforms in 2023." shopify.com. website . 2023.

Subair.s, et'al. "Social Media:: Usage and Influence on Undergraduate Studies in Nigerian Universities."
International Journal of Education and Development using Information and Communication
Technology (2019): 55 &56.

Zedd, Eliot. "Opinion | Social media has turned college students into mass consumers." 2023.