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Jonah Zuniga

Instructor McCann

English 1302.203

9 February 2022

Effects of Social Media

In today's world, there is a ton of social media apps that billions of people use on the

daily. One of the apps that are insanely popular as of today is called TikTok. Tiktok is an app that

consists of short videos that can be 15 seconds to 1 minute. The problem with this app is that

with these short videos the attention span of a normal human being starts to decrease because the

videos you watch switch constantly and you are entertained. The personal experiment starts with

stopping the use of a certain social media app and how it affects a person's mood throughout the

span of a week.

First of all, there are many different ways to combat the use of social media and not

letting it get in the way of your personal life. One of the ways to combat the effects and use of

social media is by deleting the apps or by putting a time limit on your phone to limit your usage.

These are all effective ways of combatting the use of social media but this personal experiment is

going to be about forcing not to use the social media apps even if they are currently installed.

The point is to see how a person would react to forcing themselves not to use a social media app

and see if it can lead to being more productive or being less productive.

According to “Understanding the Effect of Internet Addiction on Student Academic

Engagement” the point of the article is to try and understand the effects and usage of social

media but only on academic engagement. They claim that there are numerous studies on the

explanation of the negative effects that social media has on students. Although this is stated,
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there are also very few students that could not explain how the use of social media affects

academic performance which is why this personal experiment puts that to the test. (Singh 2)

To start off, the personal experiment is forcing yourself to not use any type of social

media without uninstalling any apps on any phone or computer. The first step into this personal

experiment is that you need to not uninstall any type of social media apps. The second step to

this experiment is that you have to go through the day without using your technology that has

social media. Although this is fairly simple to accomplish, to any human being that uses any

social media, this would tremendously affect them.

On the first day of this personal experiment, it was a very difficult experience because of

the constant use of technology and social media together. The urges to combat the use of social

media are almost impossible. For example, the researcher would be doing work and they would

be having the urge to check their social media or whatever it could be. Although the researcher,

tried to force themselves to not use social media, they failed to not use social media. The

researcher would immediately go to TikTok and watch videos for a few hours and because of that

bad habit, they fell back on work and had to rush to finish which does affect the academic

performance of that individual.

Furthermore, on the second day of the personal experiment, the researcher still found it

all the more the same difficulty to not use social media while doing their work. The researcher

would still have the urges to check their phone and social media. Although it was still difficult to

not use social media, it did feel easier to not use social media because of the first day of not

using any type of social media. The researcher did more academic research and wor than normal

but although the researcher did more work the urge to use social media was still there and overall

did fail to not use their phone.

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The next day of trying the personal experiment the researcher again did try to not use

their phone to feel entertained but instead of using their phone while doing work, the researcher

resorted to using youtube. The researcher started playing youtube in the background at a lower

volume to not be too distracting but can still be entertained. This caused the researcher to feel

less stressed and there were fewer urges to use social media and check their phone constantly.

Although the idea of having youtube in the background was distracting enough to keep the phone

away there were would be an excuse for the researcher to use their phone.

Finally, on the last day of the personal experiment, the researcher was successful in not

using their phone while working on an assignment. Although the researcher did not use any

social media on their phone their academic performance stayed the same. They got to finish the

same amount of work they did as they did the day before. So, according to the article

“Understanding the Effect of Internet Addiction on Student Academic Engagement” using social

media did not necessarily increase student performance but it also did not decrease any academic

performance in their research. In the article “Using Social Media to Enhance Student

Engagement and Quality” they stated that there are certain benefits to the use of social media

which can be for the better for any student.

In conclusion, there is fine line between not using social media to increase academic

performance and using social media to increase academic performance. There is certain line

where the benefits of one another just do not affect the researcher anymore. There is very little

room for improvement whether it be using social media and not using any social media. Overall,

the experiment was to see whether or not using social media would affect the researcher and to

see the overall mood changes for the researcher.

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Work Cited

Lottering, R. A. “Using Social Media to Enhance Student Engagement and Quality.”

South African Journal of Higher Education, vol. 34, no. 5, 2020, pp. 109–121.,

doi:10.20853/34-5-4271.

Singh, Anjali, and Dinesh Kumar Srivastava. “Understanding the Effect of Internet

Addiction on Student Academic Engagement.” International Journal of Information and

Communication Technology Education (Ijicte), vol. 17, no. 4, 2021, pp. 1–12.,

doi:10.4018/IJICTE.20211001.oa11.