Year: 2022

School: Choiseul Secondary

Subject: Mathematics
Centre Number: 140012
Candidate Names Candidate Number

Jervana 1400120583

Yoana 1400120400

Joy-Ann 1400120850

Markell 140012

Keyra 1400120214
Project Title:
An investigation into whether there is a correlation between time spent on social media and

student academic performance among students of the Choiseul Secondary School.

 Table of Contents

Page Number

Introduction……………………………………………………………………

Method of Data Collection…………………………………………………….

Presentation of data……………………………………………………………

Analysis or processing of data…………… …………………….………...…...

Discussion of findings…………………………………….…………………...

Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………

Bibliography ………………………………………………………………..…

Appendix ………………………………………………………………………
 Introduction

Our group chose the topic students to spend most of their time on the internet and do worse on

examinations. We chose this topic because it is a common issue at Choiseul secondary school

where social media is more of a distraction than a tool of research and learning. The main

purpose of social media is to provide entertainment to its users which can be a good thing but it

can also be a bad thing to those who lack self-control. The overuse of social media can lead to

procrastination and various forms of mental illness which is what prohibits students from

achieving good grades. Our group noticed that the overuse of social media is a problem many

teenagers face at our school.

Problem statement: Students spend most of their time on social media and do worse on

examinations. As researchers, we intend to find the overall time spent on social media daily and

how that reflects on the end term grade.

Subproblems: The purpose of the project is to determine the following;

1. The time spent on social media weekly at Choiseul Secondary School

2. The end of term percentage of students at Choiseul Secondary School

 Method of data collection

The method of data collection for this research will be a questionnaire. A questionnaire is a

research instrument consisting of a series of questions to gather information from respondents

through a survey of statistical data. The questionnaire will take the form of a Google Forms

Document sent via email to eighteenth fifth form students six from each classroom. The

questionnaire contains nine questions that answer our subproblems:

● The time spent on social media weekly at Choiseul Secondary School

● The end of term percentage of students at Choiseul Secondary School

After which, results will be presented by a pie chart showing the time spent on social media

weekly and the average percentage grades of fifth form students at CHSS

Name of websites used Websites address

Google forms https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=
web&rct=j&url=https://docs.google.com/fo
rms&ved=2ahUKEwijlMa1s7H1AhUORz
ABHWrXDcAQFnoECAUQAQ&usg=AOv
Vaw0zCAP7G8yQsXO0xKvKnQxp

Questionnaire
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1m-f6BBELDBZDghi-4sgbkZiYqy1f6YoiyvQhbMqvDhs/prefill
Questionnaire questions:

1. What class are you in?

2. Do you use social media?

3. If yes, how much time do you spend on social media daily?

4. Which social media app do you use the most?

5. Which social media app is best for learning?

6. Do you use social media for entertainment?

7. If not for the question above, how useful is social media when it comes to expanding

your knowledge and helping you with your education?

8. What was your average score for each term?

9. Do you feel like social media affects your end of term percentage?

10. If yes to the question above do you think your end of term percentage was affected

negatively or positively?
 Presentation of data

Figure 1:Values inside the pie chart are the number of students*

Figure 2:The end of term percentage of students at Choiseul Secondary School

Weekly Number of Hours Spent Students’ Average End of Term

on Social Media By Students Grade (%)
21 72

56 67

28 63

42 58

35 68
 Analysis or Processing of Data/Calculations
From the pie chart in figure 1, it is seen that the majority of students, which is 6, spent 21 hours

weekly on social media. That made up 33.33% of all the students who participated in the

questionnaire. 27.78% per cent of students spent 56 hours weekly on social media which made

the difference between the number of students with the most and least amount of time 5.55%.

The other 38.89% of the students spent 35, 28, 42 hours on social media with the students who

spent 35 and 42 making up 11.11% each and those with 28 making up 16.67%.

The table in figure 2 shows that there is no correlation between the amount of time spent on

social media and the grades of students. The students who spent 21 hours did the best in

comparison to the other students but those who spent 56 hours did not do the worse. Students

who spent 21 hours on social media got an end of term grade that was 5% higher than those who

spent 56 hours, which is not a large difference. The biggest difference in grades was generated

from the hours of 21 and 42 with the students who spent 42 hours getting 14% lower than those

who did 21. The rest of the students aside from those who spent 21 and 42 hours got very

average grades ranging from 63-68%.

 Discussion of Findings

From the results, it is seen that students who spend less time on social media do much better than

those who spend more time. However, due to the inconsistency of the rest of the results, it is

believed that social media may not be the actual problem. Students who spent 28 hours on social

media would have gotten a much higher grade if that were the case. Other types of distractions

that are not social media could have played a part in the inconsistency. For example, a student

could spend 2 hours weekly on social media and spend 50 on video games or streaming services

such as Netflix and Hulu. Another contribution would be the random distribution of students in

different classes. Some students are more intelligent than others and certain classes contain more

of those students than others. That would explain why students who spend 56 hours weekly on

social media did not obtain the lowest grades.

 Conclusion

In conclusion, the overall purpose of this project was to link the correlation between students'

grades and social media. In our finding, we discovered that there was no real connection between

the two as seen in the mixed results obtained. We now believe that there may be other factors that

contribute to their grades. Such as home life, time spent studying, learning style, time

management etcetera.