Journal of Engg.

Research, ICETET Special Issue

Impact of Facebook on Academics of College Students

DOI : 10.36909/jer.ICETET.14999

Ms. Deepali Mahajan, Dr. C. NamrataMahender.

Department of CS and IT, Dr. B. A. M. University, Aurangabad, Maharashtra,India.

*Email: deepaliborole@gmail.com;nam.mah@gmail.com

ABSTRACT

Facebook has become the most popular among the students. Hence there is a need to

examine the effects of excess use of Facebook. There are different factors discovered which

leaves greater impact on the students, this study examines the effects of using Facebook on

undergraduate and postgraduate students and finding the association between the excess use

of Facebook and academic of the students. A cross-sectional design was used to collect the

data from college and university students who are using the Facebook. Total 106 participants

have participated in an offline survey. The research has shown that there is a positive

correlation between Excess use and Academics of students. The results suggests that the

moderate use of Facebook can help students in their studies.

Key words: Addiction, Facebook, Social media, Academics.

INTRODUCTION

Now a days Social networking sites have gained renown over the past decade. This world

welcomes the new technologies and make use of it for the betterment of current technologies,

communication and Education. It becomes the part of life. Regularly people use themIt

assists people in becoming more informed, enlightened, and up to date on international

events. Humanity is exposed to a better method of doing things as a result of technological

advancements[1]. Social networking sites such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Skype, Google

Talk, Google Messenger, Twitter, Snap chat are

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popular in the students. Adolescents and adults spend a significant amount of time on the

internet for varies purposes. Some researchers stated that the use of the internet can be

helpful for students to complete academic work more effectively and efficiently and can be

supportive for communication enhancement, social connection, and even developing

technical skills. with this heavy usage of web, a large part of this generation’s social and

emotional development is occurring while on the internet and on cell phones[2] New

technology can change society, but a fear about the negative has arose about its physical,

social and psychological consequences[4] There is need to understandthe global changes

affecting the adolescent and adult behaviour and their academic performance[5].

Students are interested in living and enjoying virtual world. They don’t have the real friends.

Virtual friends are more in number, and this online relationship is developed through social

networking sites. Due to rapid flourishing of social networking sites the use of traditional

communication channels have been declined. As a result, social networking sites are now the

primary medium for sharing, disseminating, commenting on, and tagging information. [6]

One of the most popularly used social networking site is the Facebook. Irrespective of age

and gender Facebook leaves the impact on all people.

WHAT IS SOCIAL MEDIA?

Social networking sites are nothing but the web applications which allow users to share their

views and have communication with other people those are also using this kind of

applications. It is a media for exchanging the information among the people in the form of

personal opinion and information. People interact through social media by creating, sharing,

exchanging, and commenting on each other's creations in various networks. This kind of

applications can be used as a tool for mass communication. Social media, according to

Kietzmannn, is a type of technology that uses mobile and web-based technology to provide

highly interactive platforms for individuals and communities to share, co-create, discuss, and

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modify user-generated content. It's a website that not only provides you with information,

but also interacts with you while doing so. Once content is shared on a social media

platform, it becomes a discussion because all users who have accounts on that platform can

interact with all posts [7].

There are many social media websites available on the internet like Facebook, WhatsApp,

Snap chat, Twitter and many more. Social media now become very popular for exchanging

the thoughts and information.

FACEBOOK

Facebook is a social media which allows the user who have sign up to connect with peoples

like friends, colleagues online. User can share the pictures, videos, music and also their own

creations and opinion with the friends list. With over two billion users globally, Facebook is

the most popular online social network. For many people, social media has become a vital

part of their daily lives during the last decade. Facebook was created to provide a networking

medium for people mainly students to interact with others.

WHATSAPP

Identify applicable funding agency here. If none, delete this text box.WhatsAppis mainly

used on smartphones. It is a messenger tool which is freely available for download. Using

this application user can share text messages, images, audio and video also. It needs the

internet for sharing this kind of in-formation. The use of WhatsAppis similar to that of the

text messaging services. The cost of using WhatsAppis significantly less than texting

messages as it is using inter-net for sending the messages. Not only the text or multimedia

messages and images but also documents and locations can be share by using this

application. More than one billion people worldwide use it to stay in touch.

SNAP CHAT

Snap Chat is another popular messaging software that allows users to send and receive

photos and videos (called snaps). Shared data in this application is automatically deleted

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Journal of Engg. Research, ICETET Special Issue

after viewing. It is particularly popular among children and teenagers because it includes

functions such as adding filters, lenses, and other effects to photos and videos, as well as

sharing them with friends.

TWITTER

Twitter is a system for'microblogging.' Users can send and receive tweets with it. Tweets are

short posts that are circulated on Twitter. Users with comparable academic and personal

interests can be followed. If a person follows someone on Twitter, he can see their tweets in

his 'timeline.'

SKYPE

Skype is a piece of software. It allows people all around the world to communicate. Skype

video and voice one-to-one and group calls, as well as sending instant messages and sharing

files with other Skype users, can be used for interpersonal and business communication.

GOOGLE MEET

Google meet is a Google App that is use to communicate with your Google Contacts. Google

meet is a desktop pro-gram, it allows users to send instant message to their contacts, and also

it is used for call them and voice chat with them as well.

Figure 1Most popular social networks worldwide as of October 2020, ranked

by number of active users (in millions)

Among all of these social media programmes, Facebook has grown in popularity and now

has the most users on the planet. There are more than 4.14 billion active users of social

networking sites around the world, with Facebook being the most popular with 2701 million

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users. With over 310 billion Facebook users, India currently boasts the largest number of

users in the world. [8]. According to statistics, roughly 94 percent of undergraduate students

are avid Facebook users who spend countless hours on a daily basis.The main concern about

using Facebook is its impact on student’s academics and health. According to a study it was

reported that students that has excess time on Facebook negatively results in academic

performance and health issues [9]. Due to its social and informational benefits, Facebook has

become an indispensable part of students' daily lives. Students and teachers communicate via

social media platforms such as Facebook and WhatsApp. Students use Facebook to pass the

time, form social bonds, and entertain themselves in addition to academic communication. It

was shown that Facebook has become a prominent platform for gathering and disseminating

information.

The purpose of this study is to find the relationship between internet addiction factors Excess

use and Academics of the students.

LITERATURE REVIEW
According to M. Owusu-Acheaw and Agatha Gifty Larson, social networking among

students has grown in popularity. It is a set of websites, services, and behaviours that

encourage collaboration, community building, involvement, and sharing on the internet.” It's

a method to connect with pals outside of school as well as on campus. Because of the

popularity of social media sites, economists and academicians are asking whether students'

grades are affected by how much time they spend on these sites.

Drury (2008) defines social media as “online resources that people use to share con-tent like

video, photos, images, text, ideas, humor, view, gossip, news”. Safko and Brake (2008)

defined social media as “activities, practices, and behaviors among communities of people

who get together online to share information, knowledge, and opinions using conversational

media. The activist media are Web-based applications that make possible to create and

easily transmit content in the form of text, images, videos, and audios”. The use of social

networking sites in academics is common, and such sites provide tools and new modes of
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communication to solve new difficulties, according to the European Higher Education Area

(EHEA).For example, such as association, the free flow of information and the generation of

content for the construction of knowledge have recently been applied to education

[10].Raymond OwusuBoateng&AfuaAmankwaa gives qualitative approach inassessing

impacts of using social sites. Over the course of two weeks, ten (10) participants were

randomly selected and interviewed. After studying the phenomena that were of interest to the

study and transcribing the various responses of the participants, the findings reveal that

social media is widely used by students of higher education, and that participants agree that

social media plays a significant role in the development of their academic lives. To

investigate how people use the internet, Kuan-Yu Lin and His-Peng Lu (2011) used network

externalities and motivation theory.

College students use social networking sites. Lin and Lu (2011) discovered that “Enjoyment”

was the most influencing factor for the increased use of Social Networking Sites among

college students after performing an empirical study with 402 samples using the Structural

Equation Modelling (SEM) Approach. AJAYI, Samuel Oyedokun (Ph.D.) and AKOLE,

OlatubosunBusuyi investigate the effects of social networking on NCE College of Education

students. The study was guided by four research questions. The questionnaire was used as the

data collection tool in the survey procedure. The study found that 263 (98.9%) of students

use social networking to keep in touch with friends and family. The study also found that 196

(73.7%) of respondents said that social networking interferes with their reading habits.

Conclusions and recommendations were given based on the findings.

PROPOSED METHOD

DATA COLLECTION

This study employed a cross-sectional design for the collection of data. Use of

questionnaires is the best way to reach to large number of people in the form of survey. The

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questions in questionnaires help us to analyze the effects of Facebook on the student’s

health, student’s psychology and student’s academic performance. We developed an original

questionnaires which includes 31 items with the multiple options. While designing the

questionnaires we have consider the different factors affecting on the user like Silence,

Excess use, Neglect of Work, Anticipation, Self-Control, Neglect of Social Life, and

Education. The participant can easily answer these questions. Survey questionnaires was

prepared and distributed to undergraduate and postgraduate students for their responses.

Total participants were 106 which includes UG, PG college and university students of

Marathwada region Maharashtra.

This questionnaires can help to reflect the effect of Facebook on different aspects of

student’s development. Questions has been drawn in English language instead of using any

regional language, to avoid language barrier for students belongs from different cultures,

religions or regions. Hardcopy of the questionnaires was distributed among students and

collected after they marked their responses. In this some students dint respond for some

questions. We have ignore such students as they have submitted blank responses.

ANALYSIS OF DATA

For analyzing the collected data SPSS software is used. Calculated frequencies, percent. In

this study we are focusingon the factors like Excess use and Academics. We have consider

the set of questions which shows the impact of these factors only. We are finding the

correlation between these factors and the effect of excess use on the academics of the

students.

We have designed multiple question which will analyze the effect of same factor. So a

compound variable has been generated for cumulative effect of all the questions for same

factor and then these compound variables have been used for the analysis. In this study we

are discussing only two compound variables that is Excess use and Academics. For excess

use we use the questions having options in ordinal measure and for academics the questions

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having their responses in yes/no form that is nominal measure.

Table below shows the questions drawn for extracting the information about Excess use and

effect on academics.

Table 1 Questionnaires included in this study

Sr. No. Questions

1 How long are you using Facebook?
2 How much time you spend in a day on Facebook?
Used for
3 What is the frequency you post status updates on Facebook? measure
Excess
Do you check Facebook as the first thing after getting up in
4 Use
the morning?
5 Last thing before going to bed do you check the Facebook?
6 Have you created any academic study related group? Used for
measure
Have you improved your communication skill using
7 effects on
Facebook?
Academi
8 Do you use Facebook for solving academic assignments? cs.

RESULTS
Result for Excess Use

The questions 1 to 5 given in the above table asked about the Facebook use and measures the

impact in the form of Excess use. According to the response of respondent we can identify

the Facebook addiction.

Table 2 shows frequency and percentage for question number 1 for the different options. The

highest percentage shown for the time period of 1 to 5 years is 40.7% (37)

In Table 3 results shows that 72.8% (75) students spends 2 hours in a day only on Facebook.

Like this tables, we have computed the frequency and percentage for all 8 questions given in

Table 1 for the analysis of Excess use and impact on academics.

Table 2.Frequency and percentage of Question How long are you using Facebook?
Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative
Percent

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Less than 1 year 30 28.3 33.0 33.0

1 to 5 years 37 34.9 40.7 73.6

Valid 5 to 10 years 23 21.7 25.3 98.9

more than 10 years 1 .9 1.1 100.0

Total 91 85.8 100.0

Missing System 12 11.7

Total 103
100

Table 3. Frequency and percentage of Question How much time you spend in a day on
Facebook??
Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent

Valid 2 hours 75 72.8 93.8 93.8

4 hours 2 1.9 2.5 96.3

4-6hours 1 1.0 1.3 97.5

More than 6 hours 2 1.9 2.5 100.0

Total 80 77.7 100.0

Missing System 23 22.3

Total 103 100.0

It shows that 62.1% (54) students are rarely post status updates on Facebook and 8% (7)

students more frequently post status updates. For question 4, 55.1% (49) students never

check

the Facebook as the first thing after getting up in the morning and 32.6 %( 29) students

sometimes checks the Facebook as the first thing in the morning. Question 5 shows the result

as 36.4% (32) students check the Facebook before going to bed.

RESULT FOR EDUCATION

The questions 6, 7 and 8 showing the results regarding the effect of using Facebook on

academics or education. For Q.6 it shows that 73% (65) students are not create any study

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related group. Whereas 27% (24) students prefer to create the groups related to study. Q.7 is

about to improvement in communication skill. 81% (73) students are agree and 18.9% (17)

are not agree on having improvement in their communication skill. Result of Q8 shows that

80.9% (89) students not using and 19.1% (17) students are using the Facebook for solving

their assignments.

Table 4. Pearson Correlation among Excess use and Education/Academics.

Excess Use Education

Excess Use Pearson Correlation 1 .014

Sig. (2-tailed) .904

N 77 74

Education Pearson Correlation .014 1

Sig. (2-tailed) .904

N 74 86

Results from Table 4 indicates positive correlation among Excess use and Education. r (86)

=.014, p < 0.001. So increase in use is associated with increase in academics. We have

started our work presuming excess use of Facebook will be having negative impact on

academics of students, but after the survey analysis it has been found that there is positive

correlation among Excess use and Education. After analysis we have also observed that this

positive correlation may also be due to responses regarding usage was averagely found to be

moderate.

CONCLUSION

The results of this study, which included 106 UG and PG students, is a moderate positive

association between Excess use and Education. When computing the compound variable of

Excess use we find that it is a moderate use of Facebook among the students. 98.3% students

use the Facebook for 2 hours a day which can be consider as the moderate use of FB. In case

of Education we observed that 75% students are not interested in creating academics related

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groups and 80.9% students are not using Facebook to solve the assignments but 81%

students are improved their communication skill. So here also moderate effect of using

Facebook on academics can be observed.

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