Freshman criminal justice major Alexis Guerra gets distracted by social media apps while trying
to study in Sims Memorial Library.
The Lion's Roar/Kelli Meynard
Students today have easy access to the internet, as well as apps on their smartphones. This can cause problems for them when trying to be productive. Social media sites can be distracting and prevent students from getting their work done.
“I think social media is good and bad,” said junior business management major Alexis Chustz. “Good in the aspect of keeping in touch or in the loop with friends’ new gossip, but bad in the aspect of being distracting or starting drama. Also, if a college student doesn’t have self-control about how often they are getting on social media, then that can be bad, but that’s not social media’s fault.”
For those students finding it hard to concentrate, they can use a free website blocker designed to block the internet or desired websites. The website is called stopprocrastinatingapp.com and helps boost concentration and performance by not allowing you to get back on the internet or certain websites that distract you the most. For example, it can block Facebook for a certain amount of time. The annual survey of student Internet habits has found that 64% of US students have suffered significant procrastination because of online distraction. Students are worried about missing out on what is happening somewhere else rather than focusing on what is happening right now. Another problem caused by checking social media is anxiety from that fear of missing out. Not being able to check social media can cause students to become anxious and make it even harder for them to focus on what they are working on, but Stop Procrastinating could be the key to getting students to be more productive when doing homework and studying.
Junior business management major with a concentration in Human Resources Micah Hamner agrees that students are affected by social media and not only that, they also are starting to possess obsessive traits over it.
“I believe that social media does affect college students,” said Hamner. “Especially in the sense of how connected people feel with each other. In other words, I feel like people are now measuring their self-worth by social media. Did people put me down as their woman crush Wednesday, how many people told me happy birthday, how many pictures am I in and so on. It’s also the same for Snapchat. People looking to see how many stories they are in or see how many people view their stories. It has become unhealthy. Cause when they don’t see the results they are looking for, people get hurt, offended and don’t feel important. Plus the drama it causes.”
Many students are rushing through their work so that they can get back on social media. The problem with this is that the quality of students’ work is not as good as it could be if the student were to forget about social media instead and focus.
To download this application, go to stopprocrastinatingapp.com.