on

Haoyu Liu

Material Engineering of The University of British Columbia

Introduction

The competition in university is big, so to have a high satisfaction of grades is challenging. Many daily habits can effect the satisfaction of grades. The study investigates the habits of the first year international students in an English speaking country. More specifically, it examines the relationship between the time spent on social media and satisfaction of grades.

Time management is important in many situations. Students with excellent time management skills could achieve their study goals with ease, and so are more satisfied with their grades. Too much time spent on the activities other than studying, such as social media can reduce the average study hours. Less study time creates difficulty in achieving the study goals. To avoid such difficulty, suggestions can be made to students. Proper suggestion can be provided to students after examining the relationship between the time spent on social media and the grades satisfaction. Given that the amount of time spent on social media has the potential to influence the quality of learning and the final grades, an empirical study of the effect of social media consumption time on the satisfaction of grades will be of great interest to undergraduates, parents, and professors.

It has been hypothesized that students who spend a few hours (less than 2 hours) per day on social media are more satisfied with their grades than those students who spend too much time (more than 6 hours) per day on social media platforms. The underlying reason of the hypothesis is that less time consumed on social media platformsmay result in more time spent on revision. Doing well in daily study could have a better performance during exams, which contributes to a higher satisfaction of grades. In brief, this study seeks to answer the question “can less time (less than 2 hours per day) on social media platforms result in a better satisfaction of grades.”

The remaining sections of the report will be organized as follows. First, in the Method section, participants and the procedures of obtaining and analyzing the data will be described. Next, in the Results section, the data will be presented and key trend will be highlighted. Finally, the Discussion section will provide the answer to the research question and explanations of the key trends. The limitations and implications of the study will also be included in the discussion.

Method

The participants were first-year students in an English speaking country. Participants of this study were volunteer students who completed the survey during spare time. Only international students are included in the survey. The total number of the respondents is 111, with approximately equal sexes. The survey is in the online form. Multiple choice question about how much time each participant spent on social media per day and the Likert scales question about how satisfied were you with your term 1 grades were included in the research. The given options of the Likert scale question only contain, very satisfied, satisfied, unsatisfied, veryunsatisfied, no neutral option. These two survey questions were chosen because they can directly obtain the answer of the amount of time spend on social media per day and the satisfaction of grades respectively. Also, the question about age, gender and residence place were included which can provide some general information about the participants. Age, gender and the place of residence can be helpful to find the reasons behind the results.

The age distribution among the participants was shown by the percentage of respondents of various ages and also for different gender. The mean of the age in all the respondents was calculated which provide the central tendency of the age. The graph of grades satisfaction verse the amount of time spent on social media was drawn which can show some trend between the two variables. The correlation function was used to examine whether a strong relationship exists between the time spent on social media and the satisfaction of grades. From the sign of the correlation, the answer of whether the spent time and the satisfaction of grades have a negative correlation or a positive correlation can be found.

Results

The results presented in this section aim to answer the research question of the current study: “Is a low time spent on social media platforms associated with a high satisfaction on final grades?” Of the 111 participants surveyed, 63(56.8%) were male students while 48(43.2%) were female students, and the age distribution is presented in Table 1.

Table 1 shows the age distribution of males and females of different ages. The age of the participants ranged from 16 years old to 22 years old and the mean value of the age is 18.7 years old. In each age domain, the number of the male is greater than female. Most participants reported being at the age of 18 with 50(45%) participants, while the mean age was 18.7 years, which approximates to 19 years. Only a small part of the participants age was below 18 or over 20 years old and these participants account for 7% in total.

Table 1: Gender and age distribution.

    Age

Gender 16 or 17 years old 18 years old 19 years old 20 years old 21 or 22 years old

Male 

63 (56.8%) 2

1.8% 26

23.4% 20

18.0% 11

9.9% 4

3.6%

Female

48(43.2%) 0 24

21.6% 18

16.2% 5

4.5% 1

0.9%

Total

111 2

1.8% 50

45.0% 38

34.2% 16

14.4% 5

4.5%

The relationship between the time spent on social media and satisfaction of grades is indicatedby the points shown in Figure 1. The opaquest points are the choices which were chosen by most participants. The choices shown by the opaque points are mostly located in the middle part of the whole graph, which indicates many participants spend moderate amount of time (2-4 hours) on social media and the satisfaction of grades is neutral. By comparing the lightness of the color of the points, a relatively clear trend could be concluded. As the social media consumption time increase the satisfaction of the grades drop and a simulated linear equation was provided on the graph as well. The range of 2 to 4 hours spent on social media daily seems to have a bigger value in grades satisfaction.

Figure 1: relationship between Grades Satisfaction and Time Consumption on Social media platforms. (Grades Satisfaction: 4 = very satisfied, 3 = satisfied, 2 = Unsatisfied, 1 = Very unsatisfied. Consumption Time: 1 = 0 hour, 2 = 0-2 hours, 3 = 2-4 hours, 4 = 4-6 hours, 5 = more than 6 hours)

The correlation between the time spent on social media and the grades satisfaction is -0.0714 which is relatively small (1 means positively correlated, -1 means negatively correlated). This demonstrates that time consumption on social media may not have a big effect on the satisfaction of grades.

The results presented in this section signify that the time spent on social media and the grades satisfaction are weakly negative correlated. Considering the relationship between the two variables possible explanations could be provided. The underlying reasons and factors that may lead to the trend between these two variables can be analyzed as well. The relationship between two variables will be investigated and discussed in the following section.

Discussion

In this section, the relationship between the time spent on social media and grades satisfaction will be discussed. The correlation between the time spent on social media and the satisfaction of grades is quite small. A fact among most of the participants shows that time consumed on social media was moderate (2–4 hours per day), and the attitudes towards grade satisfaction were neutral. An interesting finding is that moderate time spent on social media seems to lead to better satisfaction on grades.

Social media consumption time is weakly related to satisfaction of grades shown by the correlation value (-0.0714) between these two variables. A certain amount of time spent on social media may not affect study quality. Consuming a lot of time on social media not indicate less time would spend on lectures or assignments. Great effect still can be put on the study even with some time devoted to social media. Thus, at the end of the term, a higher degree of satisfaction on grades still could be obtained. Although the correlation is small, satisfaction of grades could depend on the amount of time that spends on social media but also may depend on extraneous variables such as mental health, cultural differences, etc.

Moderate time spent on social media and neutral attitudes towards gradesatisfaction are the common answers among most of the participants. Age could be a factor that causes this fact. The mean of the age is 18.7 years old, which means that participants can be treated as adults. Adults usually have a mature thinking process and are equipped with the ability to tell right from wrong (Damasio, 2001). Because of the thinking process, time can be managed properly and extra time spent on social media could be avoided. 2-4 hours spent on social media per day may not have a big adverse effect on the outcome of studying, so the satisfaction of grades do not drop greatly. Thus, the satisfaction of the grades can be kept neutral.

Moderate time on social media can lead to a better grades satisfaction. Moderate time consumed on social media during the time between two study periods may actually improve the efficiency of learning which could have a positive impact on the grades satisfaction. The time which people pay enough attention to their work or studies is limited (Bayne, Cleeremans, & Wilken, 2009). A high focus on work may create distraction or increase stress. This will cause the quality of work to worsen.One of the best ways to avoid distraction is totake a break from work and do something else (Weyhenmeyer&Gallman, 2006). So a certain amount of time spent on activities other than studies could help increase the concentration before continuing to study. Therefore, moderate time spent on social media provides the chance to reduce the distraction and raise the efficiency of studying. With a high quality of studying, students can end up with good performance in exams, and thus could result in a high satisfaction of grades.

From the analysis of the data, the results go against the hypothesis of the study. One limitation is lack of accuracy in measuring the amount of time that spent on social media. Another limitation is thatcultural differences can make the reliability of the results from the Likert scale question uncertain. Based on the findings, the suggestion of moderate time (2-4 hours per day) spend on social media can result in the higher satisfaction of grades can be provided to students.

References

Bayne, T., Cleeremans, A., & Wilken, P. (2009). The Oxford

   Companion to Consciousness. Oxford, UK: Oxford 

   University Press.

Weyhenmeyer, J., &Gallman, E. A., (2006). Rapid Review

   Neuroscience. Maryland Heights, Missouri: Mosby

   Elsevier.

Damasio, A. R. (2001). The Scientific American Book of the 

   Brain. Guilford, Connecticut: Globe Pequot Press.