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Annotated Bibliography

Is Social Media for Students Good or Bad

Bassam Alharbi

Professor Malcolm Campbell

UWRT 1104

10/18/2017
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Annotated Bibliography

Alwagait, Esam, Basit Shahzad, and Sophia Alim. Impact of Social Media Usage on Students

Academic Performance in Saudi Arabia. Computers in Human Behavior, vol. 51, part B,

2015, pp. 1092-1097.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563214004804?_rdoc=1&_fmt=hi

gh&_origin=gateway&_docanchor=&md5=b8429449ccfc9c30159a5f9aeaa92ffb

Accessed 11 October 2017.

This Journal article studied the relationship between social media and students academic

performance in Saudi Arabia. In the beginning, they showed that social media plays a big

role in the education system and students lives based on many sources which they have

been following through their study. The authors tested their study on college students

between the years 2012-2014 to take exact numbers that could show the relationship

between social media and students GPA. They chose those years because those years

were the time that social media started to become an essential role in college students

lives. They have found disadvantages for social media on students, which could impact

their lives negatively such as cyber bullying, personal data leakage, and wasting time.

They published a survey through students email to find answers for their questions which

are how can students not get negative impact from social media, how your GPA changed

through the last these years, whats the most popular website, and how many hours do

you spend on social media sites per week. They have found that students had higher

GPAs in 2012 than in 2014 which means that social media negatively impacted their

academic performance. Moreover, the time spent on social media per week is increasing

by 3.4% annually. Twitter was the most popular site between Saudi students. The article
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shows a variety of sources and many studies that have been done in this field, which

made this journal article a reliable source. The authors tried to cover the impact of social

media on students in specific years to illustrate the relationship between them. They have

used a survey to show the figures based on students usage. I think this would fit perfectly

into my EIP project because it gave me a variety of sources to read and explore more

about my topic. In addition, this study based on students in my country which means I

can understand more clearly the way students responded to this survey.

Karadkar, Abhishek. The Impact of Social Media on Student Life. Technician, Newspaper of

NC State University, 4 Oct. 2015,

http://www.technicianonline.com/opinion/article_d1142b70-5a92-11e5-86b4-

cb7c98a6e45f.html Accessed 11 October 2017.

This newspaper article indicates a variety of reasons that social media is a method that

could be used positively or negatively for students. Firstly, the author used many sources

to define the point that he wants to reach, in the beginning, he quoted what Marshall

McLuhan, a philosopher of communication theory, said about the internet, and then he

says that internet illuminates the lives of thousands of people by spreading knowledge

internationally, thereby making us global citizens. Secondly, the author gave a brief

overview of the history of people communicating with each other in the past generations,

and how it looks easier nowadays than before because of social media impact on the

society. According to the article, the social need of human beings is becoming the third

most requirement thing in their lives after safety and physical needs, and that shows how

much social media could develop in the society through this point. Facebook became one

of the top two population in the world by 1.49 billion active users and the number is
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increasing every year, another study by Pew Research Center shows that 72% of high

school students and 78% of college students are using Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.

These numbers show how much students are involved in the social media environment,

and there are many reasons exist to explain why students are involved in these sites such

as freedom, making new friends, and creating other identities. The other side of this

subject is how students academic performance is affected by social media, students

attend to use social media more than they spend time studying their school material, and

that relates negatively to their GPA, or learning new skills which could help them in their

future career. This article was written by a college student which means that he knows

how much of an impact social media has on students and how to organize the time

between social media and school. The author used several reliable sources to shows his

point, he mentioned the history of communication and how it might reflect our modern

life, and he gave a solution that students could attend to use without affecting their social

life. I will use this article as one my sources because it supports my theory on social

media with evidence.

Walton, Alice G. 6 Ways Social Media Affects Our Mental Health. Forbes, Pharm and

Healthcare, 30 Jun. 2017, https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2017/06/30/a-run-

down-of-social-medias-effects-on-our-mental-health/#6d0ca23b2e5a Accessed 11

October 2017.

This web article illustrates the way that social media could affect our mental health

specifically. The article started to compare social media with sitting on chairs and says

that sitting is one of the reasons that many people die these days, sitting becomes more

dangerous nowadays because it includes social media and people tend to use social media
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to kill time while they are sitting. According to The American Academy of Pediatrics,

social media could have a potential negative impact on the mental health of kids in many

ways such as becoming addicted to social media. Teens spend many hours on social

media and according to many studies, it could stop their brains from developing and kills

many skills such as creativity imaginations. The second point is when teens or even

adults use social media it could be because they are less happy in their real life, thats

what leads people to use alternative identity so they can run away from reality. One study

shows that people compare themselves to others through posts on Facebook, which leads

sometimes to depression and jealousy which is the fourth way that social media leads to a

mental health problems. Whenever people take a vacation or get a new car they would

post pictures on Facebook, and other people cannot afford that. Teens get affected

through this point, because their friends would post pictures of their cars or vacations and

some cannot get what their friends have gotten, that results in endless feelings of

jealousy. Having more friends on Facebook does not mean more friends in real life, and it

is obvious that some teens would like to have more friends, however, when you have a

big list of friends on Facebook that does not mean you are a social person or you have

gotten many friends into your life, they are called digital friends. In addition, teens and

adults tend to get caught in a delusion of thinking social media would help, many of us go

to social media thinking it would make us feel happy but it does not, and we know that,

but, we cannot stop because we are addicted to it. Although social media has all these

problems, it is important in our lives and we should use it, however, we have to

understand the consequences and try to avoid it. The article is valuable because it used

many sources that help to understand the issue more clearly. It illustrates the problem that
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teens and even adults can get affected negatively from social media and provide the

solution and ways to avoid these issues. The article would be helpful for my project

because it gives me a step to start to study these issues and how it related to students and

their academic performance.

Yeager, Joe. How Kids Can Be Save On Social Media. Social Media Club, 28 August. 2013,

https://socialmediaclub.org/blog/from-the-clubhouse/how-kids-can-be-safe-on-social-

media Accessed 12 October 2017.

This article from Social Media Club blog indicates the potential risk of social media on

kids, which transferred to be a worldwide issue. The author was concerned about his 8-

year-old daughter that she started using a smartphone, which he was proud of somehow.

The other side of the article is how he was concerned about the Snapchat app, which

became one of the fastest growing apps on the internet. Snapchat has 200 million users,

designed to be about pictures and videos that will appear only for 10 seconds, sounds

safe. Some teens started to use the app to send inappropriate images among each other,

and unfortunately, hackers found a way to save those pictures and videos without having

permission from the other person and they will not be able to know that the hacker saved

them. These issues support to the fact that social media is a dangerous platform for kids,

and parents have to watch their kids and making sure they do not do the things that could

put them at risk. However, saying all that scary point, social media is bigger than imagine

it in one point only, social media is a digital world that has pros and cons, so if you want

to make sure everything goes well with your kids you have to watch what they are doing.

This article showed that social media is a dangerous platform, however, it showed the

solution that people have to use in addition, to approximate the most benefits from the
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social media. The article shows me a way to find solutions, and how to break down the

issues into pieces, therefore, I would be able to understand the problem, that the only

benefit, other than that it will not be helpful for me in my project.