For many students, social media is a huge distraction. Social media sites, such as Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook can be really interesting that students are distracted quite easily. Students may find that their education process is boring enough that they focus on social media for diversion purposes. It is quite understandable why social media can be really distracting. If you receive a message or notification, your smartphone will make a noise and this could attract you to open the device. This could disrupt your study session. It means that a couple minutes could end up becoming a couple hours you spend with social media platforms. Students should know how often they check social media websites. Normally, you can do that a few times each day, but many students simply lose count.
Other than the frequency, another significant factor is how much time do you spend on a session. Normally, each session shouldn’t be more than 15-20 minutes, but many students could spend several hours in each social media session. It is a bad indication if your social media time is longer than your study time, even if only slightly longer. Before your study session, you should find out whether you check social media first. If yes, then it can be considered as a bad indicator. It is also not a good thing if you allow Facebook to run in the background in your computer or smartphone during your study session. It means that notifications can pop up randomly during your study session, tempting you to open them. During a study session, these notifications may switch your attention quite easily.
Many students also check their social media accounts before they go to bed, potentially causing them to spend many hours. This will reduce their quality of sleep, which can have bad effects on their performance at school. Not many students can resist the temptation for being distracted. If you are distracted easily, you need to know the reason why. In more serious situation, you can be addicted, which means that your condition needs to be treated. If you are already obsessed with social media, you need to take real steps to change your ways. There are ways you can do take back control and the first thing that you need to do is keep a time log. You should make sure that you don’t switch attention too easily.
If your obsession is difficult enough to handle, you may need to reward yourself. There should be a clear boundary between Facebook and study time. When you are preparing for an important exam, you need to change your password and ask your friend to do that. Keep the password secret until after exam, then you can ask your friend to show you the password. In more serious cases, you may not be able to resist the temptation to access Facebook. There’s no other option than deactivating your social media accounts, if they have seriously jeopardize your education performance and eventually your future.
