The advancement in technology has revolutionized the world with the internet technology significantly influencing the social, professional and individual human life. People of all ages worldwide have embraced the use of the internet and enjoy its convenience in their daily life and also in running huge systems. A number of concerns have been raised on the negative impacts of Social Network Sites and also balancing their negative impacts with the conveniences offered. Actually, students and teenager are the main focus as they are the common and frequent internet users. Social Network Sites such as Facebook has greatly impacted the way college students behave and practices. Other Social Networks such as Twitter, Instagram, and WhatsApp have been determined as the most common mode of networking for students. Many have claimed that poor students’ academic performance is due to these Social Network Sites. Nonetheless, there is a limited explanation on how Social Network Sites relate with the psychological well-being of students. This paper, therefore, seeks to give a scientific explanation on whether Social Network Sites give students a negative impact and explain how Social Network Sites relate to the psychological well-being of students and learning their abilities.
Social Network Sites affect students’ academic performance since they pay a lot of attention to them. For instance, texting or posting to these Social Network Sites impacts students psychologically. With regards to psychology, the information processing theory asserts that texting of students while in class causes distraction that affects the students’ learning negatively (Ahn, 1435). In essence, information processing requires attention, metacognition, working long-term memory, and short-term memory to be important aspects that enable one to learn and understand new information. Learning being a process, reduced capacity with any single learning enhancing aspects can impact other aspects (Ahn, 1436). Therefore, in the instance of texting or posting, the students’ attention is divided causing distraction on the students’ attention from concentrating on the studies. Also, the information that is processed in the working or short-term memory may end up being unfinished and inaccurate which can eventually result in insufficient information storage in the long-term memory (Ahn, 1436). Moreover, students’ involvement in simultaneous multitasking such as texting or posting to social media like WhatsApp and reading or listening to lectures, the students’ behavior is impacted. The causal model also finds Social Network Sites use as intermediary variable connecting student’s self-regulation to be the main aspect of cognitive and metacognitive learning (Ahn, 1437). Precisely, when higher rates of Social Network Sites use are present among students during studies, students have a tendency of being unable to regulate and manage their own behaviors in such a way that would enable them to effectively perform in their academic performance assessment.
In essence, the journal used as evidence above has effectively answered the question on whether Social Network Sites impact students negatively. The author has efficiently interrelated the psychological impact of Social Network Site use on students. The information processing theory and causal have partially answered the question. Despite these author arguing and providing evidence that Social Network Site impacts students negatively, he failed to identify the precise mechanism in which reduced attention and academic achievement link are made. This, therefore, raises the question; what are the specific mechanisms of Social Network Sites that impact students negatively?