The Use Of Social Networks

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between SNS' usage and academic performance of students. A sample of 100 English-speaking students, both undergraduate and graduate was selected from Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy. Personally administered survey was used as a data collection tool. Students' academic performance satisfaction was used as a dependent variable. The independent variables showed how often students used and checked SNS, how much time they spent on SNS for educational purposes, how actively they were involved in online educational activities and the level of SNS distraction. In order to analyze academic productivity, I had their GPAs statistics as well. The observations showed that despite the fact that SNS' usage has a negative impact on some respondents' academic performance, majority of students reported that they can still balance their time between social networks and lessons and carry out necessary requirements. This means that the impact of SNS on academic performance is not significant.

Introduction

According to Ayaz Abdoulkady, a researcher in Hailey College of Commerce," technological changes have always been seen as strong evolutionary force but the advent of Internet is something that has shaken almost all spheres of personal, social and professional human life". The Internet is something important and inevitable for us today. People use it for many purposes. However, there are many debates on whether usage of the Internet is beneficial or problematic. The major and the most important part of the Internet are the social networking sites (SNS). According to Nethistory.info, a social network consists of "the connection of many online communities leading towards the sharing of information and knowledge".

The number of SNS increases each year. The most popular ones are Facebook, Classmates.com, LinkedIn, Twitter among others. The number of the users of social networks grows each year as well and this once again emphasizes the importance of social networking sites for people. According to blog.facebook.com, the growth rate of active users of Facebook is equal to 153%. Millions of people want to connect to one another and SNS provide us with such opportunities. However, this does not necessarily mean that social networks are only positive. Students are one of the main users of social networking sites. When students use social networking sites, they have to be careful in order not to suffer from potential problems SNS may create. The increasing role of social networks in students' lives requires careful examination of students and attracts many researchers to work in this area. As statistics show, in 2006, out of adult Internet users (18-29 years) 16% were those who were using a social networking site and this percentage increased to 86% on 2010 (www.marketingcharts.com). For many students social networks are more important than their studies. Therefore, I will try to explore the connection between SNS' usage and academic performance in this paper.

As students are considered as main users of social networking sites today, there are many discussions on whether positive impacts of SNS on students outfit negative impacts. From Economics course we know that students are included in social capital of a nation. Social networks can influence students, so SNS can affect the development of social capital as well (Junco, 2011). The Academic performance of students has a positive correlation with "informative usage of social networking sites and a negative correlation with recreational usage of SNS" (Shah et al., 2001). Shah also proposed that the usage of social networks for educational purposes increases performance level and efficiency of both students and teachers and this leads to the development of social capital of a nation. All this proves that social networking sites play an important role in students' academic lives. According to Tuckman, a famous blogger, grades are the most important indicators of academic performance. He believes that "the use of SNS is one of the most important factors that can influence educational performance of students positively or adversely" (Tuckman, 2005). Tuckman proposes that students have to manage their time efficiently despite the fact that most of them tend to overuse social networking sites.

Earlier it was pointed out that students are main users of social networking sites today and the number of these users grows each year. However, it is interesting, if students are aware of the costs of using social networks, why does this number increase? Then, this means that many of them do not realize the problems SNS may create in their studies. This interesting issue attracted many researchers. Many studies explored the connection between social networking sites and academic performance of students. There are some arguments in favor and against of using social networks in education. It is important to analyze some of them to explore the connection between SNS' usage and academic productivity.

One of the main indicators of academic productivity are grades, GPAs, in another words. We can think that there is a negative correlation between SNS' usage and grades. This means that excessive usage of social networks is associated with lower GPAs. Thomas (2007) discovered that there is a connection between students' efficiency in studies and SNS' usage. He showed that it is difficult for students to concentrate both on social networks and their lessons and so academic performance and grades decrease. One of the most significant studies in this area belongs to Karpinski. He also observed a negative correlation between social networks and GPAs: "GPAs range 3.5-4.0 for non users but lesser for users i.e. 3.0-3.5" (Karpinski, 2009). Constant users of social networking sites had serious problems during exams. Karpinski also claimed that Facebook actually is the worst place for students as it distracts them and they fail to fulfill their academic requirements. However, he pointed out an interesting fact: most of the students indicated that SNS' usage did not have any negative impacts on their academic productivity. Therefore, many other researchers found a negative correlation between SNS' usage and academic productivity of students as well. In my opinion, the popularity of social networks among students should be immediately reduced. However, there are those who explored positive sides of social networking sites in education as well.

There are various researchers who explored a positive correlation between SNS' usage and academic performance. For example, "the constant users had high in-class performance and high grades" (Lindale et al., 2006). Facebook usage can be helpful for "students with low self-esteem" (Ellison et al., 2007). Shah pointed out that an appropriate usage of social networks does not damage the development of social capital (Shah et al., 2001). As Junco, a writer and a blogger, pointed out, social networking sites such as Facebook do not reduce a student's GPA if not used excessively (Junco, 2011). Another positive side of social networks is that they can stimulate relationships between students and their teachers as well.

Research problem

We can observe that there is no exact answer to questions of the negative and positive impacts of SNS on academic performance of students today. The aim of this research is to explore the connection between SNS' usage and academic productivity and explain this connection in case it exists. Students need to acknowledge their SNS' usage. Therefore, my research question is "What are Azerbaijani university students' perceptions of the correlation between SNS' usage and their academic performance?" As it was pointed out earlier in this paper, academic productivity is used as a dependent variable and independent variables will help to analyze the dependent variable. A survey will be used as a data collection tool. My hypothesis is: there is a negative correlation between the usage of social networking sites and academic performance.

This work can help by filling an important gap in the existing research. First of all, there are no similar studies made by Azeri researchers to refer to. Therefore, I will not be able to compare my results with results of other papers in Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan is a young country, so there are plenty things to work on in the near future. Secondly, there are relatively few foreign, non-Azerbaijani researchers who are interested in exploring the correlation between SNS' usage and academic productivity. This means that there are few studies to explore and compare my results with. There is no huge interest in this field of study particularly.

Methodology

A personally created survey by using Survey Monkey was used as a data collection tool. It consisted of two links as one link can include only 10 questions. The survey was sent via e-mail to 260 English-speaking students of Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy ,both undergraduate and graduate. Out of total 260 students, 100 responded to the survey and were included in the sample. 81 of them were undergraduates while the rest 19 - graduates. All respondents were between 17 and 24 years old. The survey consisted of 20 closed-ended "yes-no" and multiple-choice questions and was completely anonymous. Results were obtained in 10 days. The survey took two or three minutes to complete.

Limitations

There were some limitations as well. First of all, the sample included only English-speaking students from Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy, but not students from other non English-speaking universities in Baku. Second, as we have seen, not everyone who the survey was sent to responded, unfortunately. Not everyone answered the questions from the second link either. And, finally, the students might not be honest and lie while responding to some questions, especially to those that were connected with GPAs, even though the survey was anonymous .

Data/Results

At the beginning it is necessary to indicate that all of the respondents (100%) were between 17 and 24 years old. The data was collected from undergraduate and graduate students of ADA and so 81% respondents were undergraduate students while the rest 19% were graduate students. These are general demographic findings and now the data related to social networks will be presented.

All of the respondents (100%) reported that they use the Internet in their daily life. When asked about social networking sites, to explore the main independent variable of this study, 98% students were found to be the users of social networks and the rest 2% were not. This finding supports the fact that today teenagers are the main users of SNS today.

Then students were asked about their regularity of SNS' usage in a more detailed way to check the frequency of this usage. 70% respondents connect to SNS every day, 15% - 3-4 days a week, 10% - 2-3 days a week and only 5% respondents use SNS once a week.

After we learned about the regularity of usage of social networks by students, it is necessary to identify the daily time spent on SNS by respondents ( see graph 1). Half of the respondents spend on average 4-5 hours on SNS a day, 30% respondents spend 1-3 hours a day, 17% spend more than 5 hours and the rest students spend on average less than one hour on SNS a day (3%). These statistics do not surprise me as many "fans" of SNS are willing to use them overwhelmingly.

Then students were asked about their most commonly used social networking site. 85% respondents told that their favorite site is Facebook, Twitter was a favorite site for 10% students and 5% respondents chose Classmates.com as their most commonly used social networking site. Teenagers love to use Facebook as it give them a chance to communicate with peers. When asked about the frequency of checking their favorite sites, 88% respondents checked their favorite SNS every day and 12% did it only sometimes. Again, this indicates that many students tend to use SNS excessively.

The next task was to identify the purpose of SNS' usage by each student because their perceptions of academic productivity are related to their SNS' usage. As it was expected, 74% respondents use SNS for recreational purposes mostly: to communicate with their friends and simply "hang out" online; while the rest 26% respondents use SNS for educational purposes mainly.

Then the survey inquired about their activities on social networking sites for further exploration of their purposes of using social networks. First of all, students were asked whether they are involved in any educational activities or groups on SNS. 57% respondents answered "no" to this question and so were not involved in educational activities while 43% answered "yes". Secondly, students were asked whether they have taken any online courses on SNS. 40% respondents answered "yes" and 60% respondents answered "no" to this question. These findings support the fact that today social networks are used for recreational purposes for the majority of students.

The next task was to explore how much time students spend on educational sites because the time devoted to online studies is closely connected with academic productivity. Quite unsurprisingly, fifty percent of respondents reported that they spend less than an hour on educational sites a day, 30% spend on average 1-3 hours a day, 10% respondents spend on average more than 3 hours on educational sites and the rest 10% do not visit online educational sites at all.

So, all these data above show us that generally speaking, recreational usage of SNS outweighs informative usage. The majority of students use social networking sites as a leisure activity. So, we have the right to think that SNS' usage decreases academic performance as many students use social networks for non-academic purposes mostly.

The next step was to inquire students about their academic life and performance. This is where I observed unanticipated results. When respondents were asked about the time devoted to daily studies, surprisingly 60% of them reported that they devote more than 3 hours to their lessons each day, 38% spend 1-3 hours a day on their studies and the rest 2% respondents devote less than an hour to fulfillment of academic requirements ( see graph 2). Then I asked students about the pattern of their lessons. 90% students study regularly, every day; 10% - only few times a week and no one studies only before exams. This means that students think of education as their number one priority, which is contrary to the observations we have seen above.

The next task was to identify the feelings students have while carrying on their academic requirements. It is interesting, but 53% respondents enjoyed the process of studying and so their attitude was positive; 30% respondents had negative feelings about working on lessons and the rest 17% are neutral. Motivation to study was an interesting point for me as well. When they were inquired about this, 69% respondents admitted that they are motivated to study, but the rest 31% were not confident in their motivation. So, we might think that for the majority motivation to learn outweighs passion for social networks.

As academic performance is our dependent variable and GPAs are used to measure it, students were asked to report their cumulative GPAs. The most significant observation here is that no one from the respondents had cumulative GPA lower than 3.00 (from maximum 4.00). 72% students reported that their GPAs belong to 3.0-3.5 interval and 28% had their GPAs in 3.5- 4.00 interval. This was the most surprising result. Though hard to imagine, but as we can observe the majority of students tend to think that they are responsible enough and try to follow the deadlines so that SNS' usage does not significantly influence their final grades. Another indicator of academic productivity is in-class performance. When students were asked about their performance despite SNS' usage, 69% respondents believed that they are able to maintain their high level of in-class performance despite the use of SNS and 31% respondents gave the opposite answers.

Competitiveness is one of the factors that can influence academic productivity as well. When students were asked whether they feel competitive enough despite SNS' usage, 73% respondents admitted that they are strong enough to survive in academic competition with other students and 27% respondents failed to survive the knowledge competition. High level of competitiveness almost always means high quality of education. Then, students were asked whether they generally felt distracted by SNS and got lower grades due to such distraction. 41% respondents answered "yes" and observed small reduction in their grades, while 59% respondents denied the SNS distraction and indicated that their grades were not affected. So, the majority do not think that social networks distract them. Another inquiry was about whether students were able to balance their time between SNS and studies. 65% respondents told that they can divide their time between SNS and studies and so they are satisfied with their grades and 35% respondents told that they have some small problems in time management. We know that effective time management leads to higher grades. The last thing students were asked about is their efficiency despite SNS' usage. Students' efficiency is closely connected with their grades and so with productivity. Here 67% respondents indicated that social networking sites do not decrease their efficiency and they were satisfied with academic performance and the rest 33% felt that SNS decrease their efficiency and so they were less satisfied (see graph 4).

Table1. Correlation matrix: Pearson correlations at 0.01 significance level

## acprsa snsf snst snsedu distr edueng

acprsa 1.00000 -0.01075 -0.00234 0.01321 -0.00308 0.00145

graph1 graph2 graph3 graph 4

C:\Users\User\Desktop\1--time spent on sns.pngC:\Users\User\Desktop\2--time spent on daily studies.pngC:\Users\User\Desktop\3--GPAs.pngC:\Users\User\Desktop\4--efficiency and satisfaction.png

Discussion

First of all, it is necessary to emphasize, that 98% respondents were using SNS. This finding proves that students are active and constant users of social networks. This indicates a strong connection between SNS' usage and daily life of students (70% respondents use SNS each day) and is a significant result as my research aims to explore the correlation between SNS and academic productivity. The fact that the majority of respondents use SNS for 4-5 hours a day as well is a good indicator of a student's interest in visiting websites. 88% respondents devote much time and check their favorite sites every day and this makes us think about students' addiction to SNS.

The observations once again proved that Facebook is the most popular site among students. The majority of respondents use SNS to communicate to their friends and chat and this shows that non-academic, recreational usage of SNS by students dominates academic informative usage of SNS.

The fact that students spend too little time on educational sites and many of them are not involved in any online educational activities and groups proves the previous finding. As many students consider social networks as a leisure activity, we might think that SNS' usage distracts them and reduces their academic performance. But the following data do not support this hypothesis and can be considered as unanticipated findings for sure.

60% respondents (more than a half) reported that they devote more than 3 hours to their daily studies and 90% respondents told that they study regularly. This shows us that students do not think that SNS distract and take too much time from them; so, students believe that they are able to devote enough time to their lessons. The fact that the respondents study regularly on a daily basis leads to a conclusion that they are quite responsible, pay attention to and have a serious attitude towards their studies and plan to succeed in the final exams and get high grades. So, it seems that fear to fail in the exam outweighs passion for social networks. More than half of respondents reported about their passion for studies and high motivation to learn. The students denied the negative influence of social networks on their motivation. It may seem that studies, not SNS are the main, number one priority for the respondents, but, as I have remarked earlier, the students might lie. However, all this indicates that SNS do not affect a student's academic life and efficiency. Undamaged willingness to learn can lead to many positive consequences.

The following findings prove the observations described above as well: the majority of respondents, 69%, to be more precise believed that they are able to maintain the high level of in-class performance and 73% respondents told that they are competitive enough. Both class performance and competitiveness are closely linked with academic performance: if they are not damaged and the level remains high, performance will probably not decrease due to SNS' usage either. High level of in-class competitiveness means high quality of education. Another data which can support students' belief that SNS do not have any negative impacts on their academic performance is GPA (see graph 3).

GPA is one of the main and most important indicators of academic performance and is a very strong argument. No one reported his or her GPA as below 3.00 (72% - 3.0-3.5; 28% - 3.5-4.0) and this means that students generally are carrying on their studies and doing well despite SNS' usage. Once again I want to remark that since this data is self-reported, it does not necessarily depict reality. So, high grades increase students' satisfaction of their academic success. This finding indicates that SNS, according to students' opinions do not decrease one's efficiency and respondents are able to maintain high level of education despite the use of social networks.

High GPAs may indicate high education level and tell us that students think they can concentrate on carrying on academic requirements and following the deadlines in the first place so that all this cannot reduce their GPAs. This is just their opinion. Then it seems like SNS somehow support students by providing them with some leisure activities when students are overloaded, but it is hard to believe in this. Generally, all respondents were satisfied with their grades and academic productivity.

According to the students, they balance their time between SNS and their studies so that social networks do not take much of students' valuable time (65% respondents). Such time management allows students to concentrate on working on the necessary requirements and so they do not face a drop in their grades. As the respondents think that they are able to balance their time between leisure and studies and so follow all the deadlines, we cannot assert that social networks somehow influence a student's ability to cover syllabus on time.

If you can cover syllabus on time, then the probability of getting higher grades increases substantially. Respondents' high GPAs seem to support this. Time management increase students' academic performance, efficiency and overall satisfaction. The fact that the majority of respondents were satisfied with their academic efficiency in education despite SNS' usage once again shows that there are almost not any negative impacts of social networks on academic productivity. High efficiency leads to higher academic performance.

It is interesting, though SNS are closely connected with student users, many of those users think that social networks do not intervene their (students') academic life. Students think that they are not distracted by SNS and can concentrate on their work. The respondents think that they are not distracted and so they are able to devote sufficient time to lessons. The majority still tend to concentrate more on academic studies than SNS. So, the findings above do not show a negative correlation between SNS' usage and academic productivity of students: in fact, this correlation is not even significant enough. Some of results above seem unreal: however, those were students' opinions. Tuckman (2005) described SNS as one of the main, but at the same time non-dominant factors that affect academic performance. The following mathematical analysis will support our conclusions.

As we can see from correlation matrix (table1), each of my independent variables (outlined in the "Abstract" section) does not have a significant correlation with academic productivity satisfaction (acprsa - dependent variable). As we see, each of the correlations is close to 0 and so it is not strong and significant enough to show that an independent variable affects academic productivity. In fact, there is almost no correlation at all. However, I thought that my independent variables are negatively correlated with academic performance. I was wrong. This means that high frequency of checking SNS by students, time spent on SNS, little time spent on educational SNS, level of SNS distraction and low student engagement in online educational communities do not influence and have any adverse impacts on academic performance of students.

Just to remind, my hypothesis was that there is a negative correlation between SNS' usage and academic productivity. As we can observe from the Table2 in Appendix, R-squared equal to 0.749 (explains almost 75% of the data) and this means that our regression is significant overall. The P-value of each independent variable and the p-value of regression model (p<2e-16)are generally too small, smaller than the significance levels (indicated by three stars each); so p-values are not significant enough. P-value is not significant even at 0.001 significance level. This means that I have to reject my hypothesis according to the "rejection rule": in fact, there is no significant correlation between SNS' usage and academic performance.

Conclusion

As the observations showed us, nowadays the majority of students are active participants of the web. However, they use social networking sites mainly for non-academic purposes. This means that for the majority recreational usage of SNS outweighs informative usage. So, we might think that such inappropriate usage could have a significant negative effect on academic productivity of students. But the further results I got were very interesting. They showed that the correlation between SNS usage and academic performance is not significant and very weak, in fact. This means that my hypothesis was not correct. Though some respondents admitted that social networking sites distract them, many others reported that they do not observe any negative impacts of SNS on them. The majority of students are confident that they are able to find balance between leisure activities on social networks and their studies. Respondents indicated that they can manage their valuable time efficiently and carry on all the necessary academic requirements and this does not lead to reduction in grades. Some of the results I got seem unreal; but we should not forget that many of them were students' perceptions and they might not be honest and lie. Even though the data is bad, it is interesting that similar conclusions belong to Reynol Junco: "SNSs membership has not significant impact on the students" (Junco, 2011). Junko discovered that social networks do not have a serious impact on one's willingness to succeed in the final exams and so do not negatively influence the level of a student preparation. Pasek et al (2006) stated that there is no significant connection between social networks' usage and lower grades, too.

Future implementations

Increasing popularity of social networking sites among students causes many debates. The consequences of SNS usage in education are controversial, so there is no exact answer whether social networks are useful or not for student users yet. This is particularly due the fact that there are only few researches done in this area. One of the problems here is that the results I got are students' opinions or perceptions that they can balance their time between social networks and lessons. This is just an individual belief and not necessarily a reality. Maybe many students are so confident and clever that they do not observe any negative impacts of social networking sites on them and so they tend to use SNS without fear. This is not the right thing to do. The main and the most important problem is that if students are able to have high grades and at the same time use SNS as much as they want, then educators and ADA are guilty as well. This may indicate that the level of education at ADA is not so high and demanding, lessons are easy, teachers are not strict enough and so students have enough free time and they are able to easily get high grades despite SNS' usage. So, I can summarize the main problems in two points:

1) results are largely correct and ADA is too easy,

2) results are unreliable.

Now let's see what should be done. First of all, many new researches have to be done in this specific field of study. Secondly, if results are correct and ADA is too easy, then ADA teachers should be more strict, especially during grading and demand much more from students than they do now. Or ADA can apply a new deadline or attendance policy. This will make students focus on their studies only and they will spend less time on social networking sites after that. If results are unreliable, I suggest to design special surveys that will show whether students are honest and "catch" respondents when they lie. I also would like students to be taught about appropriate use of SNS and this, in my opinion, will keep their academic performance in a high level. Students comprise a nation's social capital and so government has to do everything possible to protect and develop it. Government has to close many dangerous for students sites and promote educational sites and social capital will benefit from this for sure. For the future research I would like to have a higher number of respondents, especially from another universities, and a higher number of honest respondents as well and ask educators' opinions about SNS usage as well (future research). So, I hope that this study will be valuable and useful for students, parents and teachers and will somehow fill the existing gap in studies in this area.

Reference list

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Junco, R. (2011). Too much leisure and not enough books: The relationship between multiple indices of SNS' use and academic performance. Computers in Human Behavior, 28(1), 187-198

Karpinski, S. (2009). A description of SNS' usage and academic

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Lindale, S.(2006). SNS: Positives in Education . USA TODAY, 2(1)

Pasek, J. (2006). America's youth and community engagement: How use of mass media is related to civic activity and academic awareness among 14 to 22 year olds. Commun. Res., 33(3): 115-135

Shah DV, Kwak N, Holbert RL (2001). Types of SNS' usage. British Journal of Educational Technology, 44(1)

Thomas, J. (2007). Relationships among student characteristics, study activities, and achievement as a function of course characteristics. Contemp. Educ. Psychol., 12(4):344-364

Tuckman, P. (2005). Student Effectiveness and Student Performance. J. Econ. Educ., 7(1): 34-39