Tyrone English

EPY 2040: Science of Learning

Dr. Daniel Feller
4-26-2020
EPY 2040
Final Project Reflection
My major is Human Learning and Development concentrating on Educational
Psychology and Counseling, and I wish to become a counselor for either high school or college
aged students in the future. I chose to discuss Social Media and its effects on today’s generation
of students because I believe that social media dependency is the main distraction affecting
academic performance in today’s society. At first I narrowed it down to its effect on K-12
students, but I thought it would be more appropriate to change it to adolescents and young adults
because these are the students I would like to service in the future. I began by finding general
statistics on adolescent social media use and was surprised to find that in 2018 nearly half of
teenagers (in the Pew Research Center study at least) admitted to using social media on a
constant basis throughout the day, (Anderson & Jiang, 2018) which caused me to reflect on my
own social media use. On most days, I am also on my phone constantly browsing Social Media
Sites (SNSs) like Twitter and Instagram. Even when watching a movie or tv show I can’t help
but unlock my phone various times throughout, even if the program isn’t particularly
uninteresting. This realization sparked both a desire to be more mindful of my own social media
use and more curious as to how social media addiction is affecting the cognitive development of
Generation Z. I included a slide on the psychological effects of SNSs because understanding how
Social Media alters the mind will be important to me in my future career. I was upset but not
surprised when I read that social media companies intentionally make their platforms as
addicting as possible (Andersson 2018) using strategies such as sequencing like notifications and
the infinite scroll. When finding survey data to add to my powerpoint, I found that educational
institutions all over the world are researching how SNSs are affecting their student’s academic
performance, and all across the world the conclusion is the same. I ended up using a study done
by researchers at the Alvan Ikoku Federal College of Education in Owerri, Nigeria, (Ezeji &
Ezeji, 2018) which found that SNSs augment the procrastinative tendencies of over half of the
students at the college. I would be curious to find out whether or not this increase in online
presence is negatively impacting the mental health of teenagers in developing nations like it is in
America where the depression rates among teenagers have increased drastically in recent years.
I would also like to speak on my addition of strategies to help curb social media addiction and
fear of failure. I think that now more than ever it is important for students to understand that
academic success is for the most part individual journey. During my time at an IB high school, I
witnessed endless cases of anxiety and academic overexertion, especially during AP and college
acceptance seasons many students would go days off of very little sleep because of a false sense
of higher education elitism which wasn’t necessarily condemned by my counselors/advisors. In
the future I would like to encourage students to understand and work within their own academic
abilities and make the high school and college years as stress free as possible.
 References
Balkis, M., & Duru, E. (2016). Procrastination, self-regulation failure, academic life satisfaction,

and affective well-being: Underregulation or misregulation form. ​European Journal of

Psychology of Education,​ ​31(​ 3), 439-459. Retrieved April 27, 2020, from

www.jstor.org/stable/24763398

Anderson, M., & Jiang, J. (2019, December 31). Teens, Social Media & Technology 2018.

Retrieved from

https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2018/05/31/teens-social-media-technology-2018/

Andersson, H. (2018, July 4). Social media apps are 'deliberately' addictive to users.

Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44640959

Ezeji, P., & Ezeji, K. (2018). Effect of Social Media on the Study Habits of Students of Alvan

Ikoku Federal College of Education, Owerri . ​World Academy of Science, Engineering and

Technology International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences​, ​12​(1), 1–5.

Seli, H. (n.d.). ​Motivation and Learning Strategies for College Success: A Focus on

Self-Regulated Learning​ (5th ed.). Routledge.

The Ups and Downs of Social Media. (2018, May 16). Retrieved from

https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/uk/18/05/ups-and-downs-social-media