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Digital revolution: Can social media affect school grades?

AIMAN INAM

BERLIN: Social media penetration gets to everywhere. Due to its hype and craze, youngsters tend to adhere to their laptops and phones so as to be connected with the online world.

In such, investigators from Germany set out to know the impacts of using social networking sites such as Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram on the academic performance of teens.

So as to look into this, Professor Markus Appel from the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) in Bavaria, Germany and Timo Gnambs from the University of Bamberg have gone through some 59 studies harboring the link amid social media use and academic performance.

The studies comprised on approx 30,000 young people around the world.

Their findings suggest that those kids, who use social media so as to discuss apropos school related matters, have been reported performing slightly better.

On the contrary, those, who use Instagram while studying, log into others social networking sites post or send messages frequently, upload snaps and their activities, tend to perform somewhat worse as such practices trigger distraction when they do homework.

Maintaining that such sites could potentially impact its users non-constructively, academics further reiterate that parents should keep a watchful eye as to know in which activities their kids are involved when it comes to use social media.

Besides, they should inject variety in their activities (such as playing, social networking, studies, physical activities etc) as too much of anything is harmful.

 

M M Alam

M. M. Alam is a Pakistan-based working journalist since 1981. Karachi University faculty gold medalist Alam began his career four decades ago by writing for Dawn, Pakistan’s highest circulating English daily. He has worked for region’s leading publications, global aviation periodicals including Rotors (of USA) and vetted New York Times as permanent employee of daily Express Tribune. Alam regularly covers international aviation and defense-related events including Salon Du Bourget (France), Farnborough (United Kingdom), Dubai (UAE). Alam has reported thousands of events and interviewed hundreds of people in Pakistan, UAE, EU, UK and USA. Being Francophone Alam also coordinates with a number of French publications.