A BCM212 Research Project

#mycuriosity

Social Media – do we use it or abuse it?

Social media has grown exponentially, becoming a significant part of our lives. 72% of the Australian population have actively adopted social media and statistics have shown an 10% increase of users per year.

From my personal experience, I know social media can be very distracting. I have gone through the process of deactivating and deleting accounts, promising myself that I will never return. – Contact me through text…

However, due to the nature of society and it’s attachment (I will call it) to social media, I had signed back up. Work and University both use social media to communicate.

Unfortunately, I have found myself, checking my social media accounts a lot more than I had intended to.

Being aware of this, I have noticed its potential to affect my performance during my studies. Has it become a bad habit? Am I addicted? How much is it affecting my mental health? I could be using this time for studying, making healthy foods, sleeping and exercising… You know, the healthy habits that would help us reach our own full potential.

The relationship between social media and mental health has always been something I have been interested in. Having an understanding of this, I would be able to help myself and others. I feel in this technological world we live in and the drastic growth of social media, we have not been prepared for the negative implications.

Research Project : The Student Experience

#MyCuriosity is the relationship between social media and our ability to perform our best, academically.

The topic is extremely broad, with many pathways to go down. I could research the positive or the negatives. I will, however, focus on the negatives. Because from my perspective, I feel we are quite addicted to social media. I would like to discover other students’s feelings about social media and how they feel it affects their academic performance.

Now, obviously there are other contributing factors that can be affecting academic performance.

This could be our bad habits such as:

• Pulling all nighters
• Leaving assessments to the night before
• Eating crap foods with no nutritional value
• Procrastination

Sound like you? To be honest, it sounds like me. I have come to blame my addiction to social media. I feel, if I could control my use of social media, I could effectively follow through with my goals.

What’s my plan?

Research symptoms of behavioral addiction, read previous studies of social media addiction and begin designing a questionnaire.

Due to time limitations of the research project, I must narrow down my question to a finer element of the student experience.

It will go something like this..maybe.