RESEARCH JUSTIFICATION
YEAR ONE INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH STUDIES
A Research On The Effects Of Social Media On SST Students
TEO TZE-SHAUN - Project Manager
CHIANG KAI JIE - Multimedia Manager
GRACE TAN HUI EN - Research Specialist
S103
SCHOOL OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
PART A
1. RESEARCH JUSTIFICATION REPORT
Our chosen area of focus is “The positive and negative effects of social networking on SST students’ studies”. We have chosen this topic as most of us do go social networking on websites such as Facebook, Twitter and Blogger. Our parents sometimes say that we are spending too much time on the computer on social networks when our grades drop in our tests or examinations, and we can’t help but agree sometimes as we use up time that could have been used for us to study and revise our homework. In our experience, we have discovered that students “who used Facebook spent less time studying and scored lower grades than those who were not busy “poking” their friends online”. But on the other hand, there may also be some good points of social networking, such as making more friends and keeping in touch with the friends you already have, even though you may not be in the same class or school as him/her. This can help the students improve their social life and confidence as they are able to talk freely with the friends that they are familiar with and maintain their circle of friends as friendship can play a big part in the students outlook towards academics.
1a. Possible Advantages and Disadvantages when overusing social networks
A. There are many disadvantages related to social networking such as spending too much time in front of the computer on social networking websites and playing games that are on the social networking websites such as Facebook. In February of 2004, research conducted in United States over several children proved that students who use Facebook, Twitter and other social networking websites excessively had a low attention span and thus score low grades.
B. Some students spend way too much time on the computer at social networking sites and neglect their studies. Hence, some possible solutions to the above mentioned problems would be to limit the amount of time spent on social networking and set aside some time for studying. Social media will then become a distraction to students and affect their focus on their studies. This can lead to drop in grades, decline in homework submission etc.
C. Social media also affects socialisation and relationships with people in our lives. Spending too much time on social media might affect our ability to interact with people outside virtuality. This is the result of spending too much time online and less and less time in the real world.
D. Nevertheless, there are some perceived advantages to the use of social media. The advantages are that students can keep in touch with their friends, ask them about homework using the chat function, even ask teachers what they want us to bring for the lessons the very next day
2. Reasons for choice of topic
-
We have chosen this topic, as we want to find out more about how social networking can affect our studies and why do we spend lots of time on social networking sites.
-
The project looks at social networking from a good and bad point of view, which is also what we will be doing.
-
This topic benefits the larger society as it informs people how to control the use of social network and how to deal with social networking and homework at the same time.
-
This topic is extremely relatable to us as SST students as we are one of the few “Future Schools” in Singapore and therefore, we spent a lot of time on electronic devices and are immersed in technology, which also includes social media.
3. Feasibility of the research
-
There is a need for our research, as many people do not know when to stop the moment they start social networking, especially students. Hence, our research can help to let these people know when to stop, as well as inform them on the advantages and disadvantages of social media.
-
The research is feasible as the proposed course of action is logical and realistic and data can be easily collected with the help of secondary one and two students in SST who would be willing to do a survey that we will be sending out. Therefore, it is possible to carry out and complete the project.
-
As for group discussion, the location is excellent because it is in school and we go to school five days a week, which provides many opportunities to meet up and discuss about the project.
4. Manageability of the research
-
The timeline for the different components of the project will be decided later based on the situation then. But overall, the project will be done as quickly and carefully as we can, trying our best not to go out of point and staying as close to the topic as possible.
-
This research provides sufficient opportunity for group work as we will need to discuss a lot of matters regarding the project, for example who will be assigned to do what component of the project and we will have to work together.
-
We do anticipate some difficulties along the way, such as poor communication among the group members and lack of data. We intend to cope with these difficulties by trying to get the group to go and upload their findings and their part of the project onto wikispaces.com
-
This project will be relatively easy to manage, especially the part of collecting data. We can easily make a survey to gather responses from SST students.
5. Accessibility of the information required
-
Information/knowledge that will be relevant to our research would be the amount of time people usually spend on social networking websites on average each day.
-
We will be obtaining this information from mainly surveys and online research on the topic. Online research will provide us with reliable and useful information, while surveys will show us the social networking habits of secondary one and two students in SST, from which we can compare and combine both sources of information.
-
Some alternatives that we have thought of would be to ask others for information perhaps by meeting up with teachers and asking them where we can find the information that we need.
-
Some problems we anticipate while gathering my materials would be that the information that we can find is not entirely relevant to our project and that that is already the closest piece of information among all others that we have found.
-
We have also found scholarly articles on this topic. The articles can be found in the “Scholarly articles” tab in our IRS blog.
6. REFERENCES
[1] Too much time online hurts your grades: polls. The Straits Times http://newslink.asiaone.com/user/UserSearch.action
[2] Five most deadly side-effects of social networking. Wizard Journal
PART B
2. INVESTIGATION REPORT
Research Topic: How Social Media Will Affect Academic Areas
How are we going to do a survey:
We will brainstorm and share questions regarding the relationship between social networking and studies of a student.
People being surveyed : 20 SST students(Average 15 Secondary one and 5 secondary two)
15 Secondary ones is 7.5% of the cohort and 5 secondary twos is 2.5% of the cohort
Reason: Because ALL SST students use social media platform
How we are going to sort out data:
We will find the most common and important key points that students state in the survey.
Steps to take
1) Come up with a google forum about their relationship between their social networking life and studies.
2) Send it out by email to 20 Sec 1s and Sec 2s the students in SST.
3) Gather and sort out data.
4) Write down the key points of our research.
PART C
3. DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS
In our recent survey, we came to the conclusion that social media does affect an SST student's studies and academics.
Firstly, from the survey results, we realised that the most popular forms of social media among SST students are: Facebook, Youtube, and Whatsapp.
Secondly, the reasons why we concluded that social media affects an SST student's studies(and as well as how) were:
Negatively:
1. 58% of respondents indicated that they put in 0-4 hours, 21% - 4-6 hours, and 21% - 6-8 hours into studies before they started using social media as compared to after they started using(74% - 0-4 h, 26% - 4-6h, and 0% - 6-8h). This will affect their study life greatly as they do not put in as much time on academics as before. According to some student’s responses, this can cause test grades to drop and other negative effects on academics and studies as they do not put in as much time and effort on academics, some of the students even having a 4 hours difference in time spent on academics before and after starting to use social media.
How many hours did you put in your studies per day BEFORE you started using any social networking platforms?
How many hours did you put in your studies per day AFTER you started using social networking platforms?
2. 68% of the people we surveyed said that they use social media because they are bored, to relieve stress, or to chat with friends. Although these activities may sound harmless or even slightly positive, they can actually eat up a lot of available time that students have that could actually be used to study or do homework. Instead of turning to studies immediately when they have free time (indicated by 48% of respondents being bored or to chat with friends), they turn to social media instead. Students may want to de-stress, and that is good, but it often will stretch to a longer period of time than planned or expected.
What do you use social network for?
Positively:
1. Roughly 70-85% of the people that took part in our online survey said that social media is beneficial to their study life as it is a good tool that they can utilize to communicate or discuss with friends about homework/projects. Many highlighted that without social media, communication will be troublesome and they would not be able to ask friends for help in academics. Only 26% said that social media was a distraction to their studies.
Do you think social media is beneficial your study life or not? Why?
2. According the people we surveyed, 63% said that they often use social media at the right time and for the right things (communication with friends over projects or homework etc.). Although some of their responses may seem contrary to negative point 2, they should have completed their homework then used social media as a form of relaxation. For example, communicating with friends over projects and homework when necessary, then using it as leisure when they have completed all their homework.
When do you use social media?
Do you think you use it at the right time for the right thing?
3. Although 36% of them said that they have to spend extra unnecessary hours each day doing homework at night past 11-12 midnight due to overuse of social media, a vast majority( 64%) stated that they hardly needed to stay up late during the week doing homework, and spent unnecessary hours doing homework maximum 1 day out of a whole week. This shows that they have good time management and most know the time limits when using social media.
How many days a week do you have to stay up late due to overuse of social media?
4. 76% of responses stated that they are able to control their time well or they are still getting the same exam results as before and therefore, social media does not affect their study life negatively.
In your opinion, does social media affect your studies?
If yes, how?
If no, how?
PART D
4. CONCLUSION
The effects of social media on an SST student's studies can be positive or negative.
Time management is the deciding factor of whether social media has positive or negative effects on SST students. If they use it correctly by controlling their time well, it can help them to excel in their studies and gain knowledge from their friends and they can use it to their advantage. However, if they overuse it and put it before their homework and studies, then they are not using it in the right way and it can cause them to be distracted and it will become a major setback in their academics and studies.
Therefore, in order for it to yield positive results, the students must have good time management and self-control to use it well. If SST students are addicted to social media and use it at the wrong time and used in an unproductive way , they might not perform well for their examinations and it might lead to other consequences.
PART E
5. BIBLIOGRAPHY
[1] Too much time online hurts your grades: polls. The Straits Times http://newslink.asiaone.com/user/UserSearch.action
[2] Five most deadly side-effects of social networking. Wizard Journal
[3] Chosen area of research
RESEARCH JUSTIFICATION
YEAR ONE INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH STUDIES
A Research On The Effects Of Social Media On SST Students
TEO TZE-SHAUN - Project Manager
CHIANG KAI JIE - Multimedia Manager
GRACE TAN HUI EN - Research Specialist
S103
SCHOOL OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
PART A
1. RESEARCH JUSTIFICATION REPORT
Our chosen area of focus is “The positive and negative effects of social networking on SST students’ studies”. We have chosen this topic as most of us do go social networking on websites such as Facebook, Twitter and Blogger. Our parents sometimes say that we are spending too much time on the computer on social networks when our grades drop in our tests or examinations, and we can’t help but agree sometimes as we use up time that could have been used for us to study and revise our homework. In our experience, we have discovered that students “who used Facebook spent less time studying and scored lower grades than those who were not busy “poking” their friends online”. But on the other hand, there may also be some good points of social networking, such as making more friends and keeping in touch with the friends you already have, even though you may not be in the same class or school as him/her. This can help the students improve their social life and confidence as they are able to talk freely with the friends that they are familiar with and maintain their circle of friends as friendship can play a big part in the students outlook towards academics.
1a. Possible Advantages and Disadvantages when overusing social networks
A. There are many disadvantages related to social networking such as spending too much time in front of the computer on social networking websites and playing games that are on the social networking websites such as Facebook. In February of 2004, research conducted in United States over several children proved that students who use Facebook, Twitter and other social networking websites excessively had a low attention span and thus score low grades.
B. Some students spend way too much time on the computer at social networking sites and neglect their studies. Hence, some possible solutions to the above mentioned problems would be to limit the amount of time spent on social networking and set aside some time for studying. Social media will then become a distraction to students and affect their focus on their studies. This can lead to drop in grades, decline in homework submission etc.
C. Social media also affects socialisation and relationships with people in our lives. Spending too much time on social media might affect our ability to interact with people outside virtuality. This is the result of spending too much time online and less and less time in the real world.
D. Nevertheless, there are some perceived advantages to the use of social media. The advantages are that students can keep in touch with their friends, ask them about homework using the chat function, even ask teachers what they want us to bring for the lessons the very next day
2. Reasons for choice of topic
- We have chosen this topic, as we want to find out more about how social networking can affect our studies and why do we spend lots of time on social networking sites.
- The project looks at social networking from a good and bad point of view, which is also what we will be doing.
- This topic benefits the larger society as it informs people how to control the use of social network and how to deal with social networking and homework at the same time.
- This topic is extremely relatable to us as SST students as we are one of the few “Future Schools” in Singapore and therefore, we spent a lot of time on electronic devices and are immersed in technology, which also includes social media.
3. Feasibility of the research
- There is a need for our research, as many people do not know when to stop the moment they start social networking, especially students. Hence, our research can help to let these people know when to stop, as well as inform them on the advantages and disadvantages of social media.
- The research is feasible as the proposed course of action is logical and realistic and data can be easily collected with the help of secondary one and two students in SST who would be willing to do a survey that we will be sending out. Therefore, it is possible to carry out and complete the project.
- As for group discussion, the location is excellent because it is in school and we go to school five days a week, which provides many opportunities to meet up and discuss about the project.
4. Manageability of the research
- The timeline for the different components of the project will be decided later based on the situation then. But overall, the project will be done as quickly and carefully as we can, trying our best not to go out of point and staying as close to the topic as possible.
- This research provides sufficient opportunity for group work as we will need to discuss a lot of matters regarding the project, for example who will be assigned to do what component of the project and we will have to work together.
- We do anticipate some difficulties along the way, such as poor communication among the group members and lack of data. We intend to cope with these difficulties by trying to get the group to go and upload their findings and their part of the project onto wikispaces.com
- This project will be relatively easy to manage, especially the part of collecting data. We can easily make a survey to gather responses from SST students.
5. Accessibility of the information required
- Information/knowledge that will be relevant to our research would be the amount of time people usually spend on social networking websites on average each day.
- We will be obtaining this information from mainly surveys and online research on the topic. Online research will provide us with reliable and useful information, while surveys will show us the social networking habits of secondary one and two students in SST, from which we can compare and combine both sources of information.
- Some alternatives that we have thought of would be to ask others for information perhaps by meeting up with teachers and asking them where we can find the information that we need.
- Some problems we anticipate while gathering my materials would be that the information that we can find is not entirely relevant to our project and that that is already the closest piece of information among all others that we have found.
- We have also found scholarly articles on this topic. The articles can be found in the “Scholarly articles” tab in our IRS blog.
6. REFERENCES
[1] Too much time online hurts your grades: polls. The Straits Times http://newslink.asiaone.com/user/UserSearch.action
[2] Five most deadly side-effects of social networking. Wizard Journal
PART B
2. INVESTIGATION REPORT
Research Topic: How Social Media Will Affect Academic Areas
How are we going to do a survey:
We will brainstorm and share questions regarding the relationship between social networking and studies of a student.
People being surveyed : 20 SST students(Average 15 Secondary one and 5 secondary two)
15 Secondary ones is 7.5% of the cohort and 5 secondary twos is 2.5% of the cohort
Reason: Because ALL SST students use social media platform
How we are going to sort out data:
We will find the most common and important key points that students state in the survey.
Steps to take
1) Come up with a google forum about their relationship between their social networking life and studies.
2) Send it out by email to 20 Sec 1s and Sec 2s the students in SST.
3) Gather and sort out data.
4) Write down the key points of our research.
PART C
3. DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS
In our recent survey, we came to the conclusion that social media does affect an SST student's studies and academics.
Firstly, from the survey results, we realised that the most popular forms of social media among SST students are: Facebook, Youtube, and Whatsapp.
Secondly, the reasons why we concluded that social media affects an SST student's studies(and as well as how) were:
Negatively:
1. 58% of respondents indicated that they put in 0-4 hours, 21% - 4-6 hours, and 21% - 6-8 hours into studies before they started using social media as compared to after they started using(74% - 0-4 h, 26% - 4-6h, and 0% - 6-8h). This will affect their study life greatly as they do not put in as much time on academics as before. According to some student’s responses, this can cause test grades to drop and other negative effects on academics and studies as they do not put in as much time and effort on academics, some of the students even having a 4 hours difference in time spent on academics before and after starting to use social media.
How many hours did you put in your studies per day BEFORE you started using any social networking platforms?
How many hours did you put in your studies per day AFTER you started using social networking platforms?
2. 68% of the people we surveyed said that they use social media because they are bored, to relieve stress, or to chat with friends. Although these activities may sound harmless or even slightly positive, they can actually eat up a lot of available time that students have that could actually be used to study or do homework. Instead of turning to studies immediately when they have free time (indicated by 48% of respondents being bored or to chat with friends), they turn to social media instead. Students may want to de-stress, and that is good, but it often will stretch to a longer period of time than planned or expected.
What do you use social network for?
Positively:
1. Roughly 70-85% of the people that took part in our online survey said that social media is beneficial to their study life as it is a good tool that they can utilize to communicate or discuss with friends about homework/projects. Many highlighted that without social media, communication will be troublesome and they would not be able to ask friends for help in academics. Only 26% said that social media was a distraction to their studies.
Do you think social media is beneficial your study life or not? Why?
2. According the people we surveyed, 63% said that they often use social media at the right time and for the right things (communication with friends over projects or homework etc.). Although some of their responses may seem contrary to negative point 2, they should have completed their homework then used social media as a form of relaxation. For example, communicating with friends over projects and homework when necessary, then using it as leisure when they have completed all their homework.
When do you use social media?
Do you think you use it at the right time for the right thing?
3. Although 36% of them said that they have to spend extra unnecessary hours each day doing homework at night past 11-12 midnight due to overuse of social media, a vast majority( 64%) stated that they hardly needed to stay up late during the week doing homework, and spent unnecessary hours doing homework maximum 1 day out of a whole week. This shows that they have good time management and most know the time limits when using social media.
How many days a week do you have to stay up late due to overuse of social media?
4. 76% of responses stated that they are able to control their time well or they are still getting the same exam results as before and therefore, social media does not affect their study life negatively.
In your opinion, does social media affect your studies?
If yes, how?
If no, how?
PART D
4. CONCLUSION
The effects of social media on an SST student's studies can be positive or negative.
Time management is the deciding factor of whether social media has positive or negative effects on SST students. If they use it correctly by controlling their time well, it can help them to excel in their studies and gain knowledge from their friends and they can use it to their advantage. However, if they overuse it and put it before their homework and studies, then they are not using it in the right way and it can cause them to be distracted and it will become a major setback in their academics and studies.
Therefore, in order for it to yield positive results, the students must have good time management and self-control to use it well. If SST students are addicted to social media and use it at the wrong time and used in an unproductive way , they might not perform well for their examinations and it might lead to other consequences.
PART E
5. BIBLIOGRAPHY
[1] Too much time online hurts your grades: polls. The Straits Times http://newslink.asiaone.com/user/UserSearch.action
[2] Five most deadly side-effects of social networking. Wizard Journal
[3] Chosen area of research
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