Effects of Facebook Usage on Students' Performance

Through the development of Facebook, people have been able to interact in diverse ways. In this regard, the Facebook offer people a chance to share ideas, interests, form groups, play games, or become fans of particular pages. As a result, students, being among the population with interest to share ideas and have fun, join the common platform offered by the site on which they can interact. The manner of use of the Facebook has aroused debate among the young people who are mainly students. Considering the tender age of students, they may lack self-control in this regard. Therefore, there is a need to establish the correlation between performance and the degree of usage of the media.

Engdahl (2007) attributes that students’ use Facebook to socialize. Facebook offers several forms of interesting activities and interaction capabilities. For instance, the site offers fan pages, chats, freedom of group formation, and the ability to connect with a list of friends. Since the site offers several channels for the students to share interests, it provides an ideal opportunity for them to share their mental and emotional ideas. Through this approach, students can build their understanding about the real world and various issues learnt in class. Interacting with other people, students learn about various means to apply in the external environment. Depending on the students’ level of intelligence, they familiarize themselves with life skills, which further contribute to the improvement of their performance.

Alema%u0301n and Wartman (2009) attribute that for students who lack the chance to participate in co-curriculum activities, Facebook offer them an opportunity to engage in constructive activities. Thus, they can break the classroom monotony and boredom. Despite the fact that the sites encourage a sedentary lifestyle devoid of any physical exercise, they offer good grounds for mind relaxation. Therefore, students can reduce mental stresses through these means. Additionally, these sites offer the users fun thus boosting their psychological stability. This is because they can play games and share with friends while creating new connections, which may assist them later in their lives. As a result, students can focus on their academics in mentally stable status, which boosts their level of performance.

Espejo (2008) claims that Facebook offer a chance for students to have fun. This contributes to application of the skills learned in class. Through the interaction that they undertake in Facebook, student’s social nature undergoes enhancement promoting the relationships that exist in school or colleges. Out of this phenomenon, students will establish appropriate relationships, which assist in handling class work activities. Since the concept encourages involvement in discussions and idea sharing, this fact will contribute positively to the students’ performance. Similarly, the students’ performance will correlate with their abilities both in class and in the external world.

Farkas (2007) considers that interactions enhanced by the Facebook encourage students to be all-rounded individuals. Through this relationship, students are able to engage in multiple activities, which improve their productivity in class especially in the manner in which they relate with other students and teachers. Consequently, students will be able to focus on multiple activities and access information that they may not access at school. As a result, these students will not be geeks. Therefore, they will avoid discrimination, which will enhance their performance. Hence, the students will co-exist properly boosting their performance level.

While Facebook may exhibit varied benefits to students, their effects are detrimental to academic performance. Initially, students are exposed to addiction due to the pleasure derived from the sites. Since the sites offer users opportunities to undertake activities of their choice such as games and ideas, the students spend most of their time in the sites. This practice will affect the students attitude since the challenges they encounter during interaction in the sites are less compared to the challenges experienced in the class work. In this regard, students waste a significant amount of their time in the sites and have little time to focus on their academics. This behavior of students would be detrimental to their studies considerably affecting their performance.

Friedman (2011) regards that the content accessed by students in the Facebook may be immoral and destructive concerning students’ academics. This results from the freedom to anonymity and students can access or post morally degrading information that influences other individuals’ behavior. Since the students’ mental stability and strength is weak, they may adopt destructive practices and behavior. In this case, some information may influence their behavior and attitude towards education. With the ideas and information gained, students focus on other things such as pleasure and disregard the importance of hard work. The students’ performance is affected with built up stress and boredom of academics. Over time, the general level of performance will decline.

Kiesbye, (2011) considers that Facebook usage allows students to engage in cyber bullying. Since most of the students’ friends in the sites are the fellow students, they engage in cyber bullying. Cyber bullying involves treating other people or teasing them in a manner that affects their attitudes. Due to the anonymity prevalent in the Facebook, academically disinterested students use this chance to discourage others. The formulation and sharing of such detrimental information affects the performance of the bullies. This is due to the wastage of time in the sites and lack of concentration in academics. In this practice, most students discourage their fellows about performance, which enhances the general drop in the level of performance. For the hardworking students, the threats affect their performance negatively.

Kirkpatrick (2010) attributes that Facebook alienates students from the real social interactions that they have with friends and teachers. Taking into consideration the fact that Facebook have online real-time interactions, people in different geographical places can easily interact. In this case, the geographical barriers are eliminated leading to loss of physical connection with other people. Since students do not have physical interactions, they cannot share their academic problems with their colleagues or teachers. As a result, the determination and effort placed in academics decline. This leads to loss of interest in academics resulting in low level of performance.

Fraser & Dutta (2008) found out that the usage of Facebook breeds laziness among students. With the time that they devote for socialization, they lack adequate time to undertake class work as it involves strenuous tasks as compared to the undertakings in the Facebook, which mostly entails minimal mental strain. For instance, Facebook offers the users some sections in the webpage where real-time chatting is possible in addition to various games which users can play and have fun. Due to the pleasure derived from these forms of mentally undemanding activities, students spend a significant amount of their time playing or chatting with fellow site users. This contributes to negative attitude, which leads to laxity in academics. This culture contributes to decline in levels of performance since students do not take any effort to accomplish the tasks themselves. Students should use the websites to be able to connect with friends for academic assistance.

 Parks, P. J. (2011) claims that the use of Facebook influences general behavior of students both at school and at home. Facebook contain immense information assessed by multiple users. Some of the main users being business enterprises use these sites to advertise business events or programs such as club dances, shows, or promotions. This kind of information may encourage students to indulge in adult activities while still being young. Their involvement in such activities leads to time wastage and other detrimental outcomes, which affect their lives in numerous ways. Over time, they lose focus on education due to the pleasure derived from the activities of such forums. They become undisciplined and fail to follow rules formulated to regulate their behaviors. As a result, students become lazy and weak in academics, which affect their performance. This contributes to the general decline in the level of academics.

Mooney (2009) found out that the information shared across the Facebook usually entails catchy issues to attract more users to view it. As a result, most people and organizations may use the site to advocate practices related to sexuality. Considering that this information is interesting to young people who wish to venture into romance, it may alter their behaviors and lifestyles. Based on the experience and ideas gained from Facebook, most users tend to engage in immoral behaviors. This steals away the student’s study time resulting in laxity and low concentration in academics. As a result, students will become defiant to their parents as well as their teachers, and may not be able to follow their advices or guidance regarding life. Similarly, the students will be exposed to the adversity of such practices like pregnancies and contraction of STDs. This phenomenon will affect the performance of the students due to lack of concentration on academics.

The above chosen method of data collection is very vital since it will considerably help to illustrate the relationship between students’ performance and Facebook usage. Two forms of questionnaires will be designed for the students and the parents. The questionnaires will be structured to consist of both the open-ended and the closed ended questions. The closed-ended questionnaires distributed will offer chance to the respondents to contribute by choosing answers from the researcher’s alternative. This form of questions will assist in collecting qualitative data that concerns students’ performance and Facebook usage. On the other hand, the open-ended questionnaires will help the researcher to collect qualitative data that assist in evaluating in the relationship between Facebook usage and students performance. In this regard, the questionnaire will give chance the respondents to give their opinions, views, and suggestions regarding the topic. This will be used to ascertain from the students and teachers whether the students’ usage of media has some impacts on their performance. In this case, students and teachers will verify students’ views as well as the researcher’s assertion. Through this process, students will provide the real impact depicting the conditions of the effects of the media on academic performance.

Based on the respondents’ replies concerning the impacts of Facebook usage on students’ performance, the anticipated reply will vary between students and parents. Since the students prefer Facebook usage for interaction and fun, the opinions and replies will correlated with positive effects of media usage to students’ performance. While for the teachers, based on the varied analysis, their views will reflect the negative effects of media usage to the students’ performance. As a result, the researcher would have to evaluate both sides of the respondents in order to make appropriate conclusions. Similarly, the analysis of the data obtained from the questionnaires is simple and reliable. This implies that questionnaires are the best method to collect the essential data for the analysis.