The intention of this literature review is to investigate other sources -diverse in origin, intention and method of publication- that challenge or agree with the hypothesis and ultimately answer the question at hand as accurately as possible with feasible substantiation. The question “To What Degree Does Social Media Usage Impact the Short-Term Memory of Dainfern College Pupils” acknowledges that social medias can act as a distraction in the academic environment and further seeks to establish if this distraction has any negative or positive impacts on learners’ short-term/working memory. The proposed hypothesis is that social media negatively impacts the short-term memory of Dainfern College pupils. Therefore, the central themes taken from …show more content…
It is located in the medial temporal lobe and much like any other system in the body, it has a limit. Short-term memory can be likened to a muscle in that it can only carry a certain load and needs to be trained to carry or, in this case, process more information. This provides context to the idea that short-term memory’s capacity is limited, and that over-stimulation can inhibit its perfunctory action. As shown in the research article (Alvarez and Cavanagh, 2004), the working memory can only store up to four objects of visual stimuli at once and there is an apparent “trade-off between the complexity of the objects and the total number of objects that can be stored in memory”. Therefore, regardless of the stimuli the short-term memory is exposed to it can be ascertained that just like a muscle, the short-term memory’s function is capped and that the stimuli it is exposed to must be moderated and …show more content…
Over the past decade, it has been introduced into work spaces and in a survey of 500 college students “73% were not able to study without some form of technology and 38% reported that they were not able to go more than 10 minutes without checking with their laptop, smartphone, tablet or e-reader”. Hence, the relationship students have with technology is both conducive to learning as well as destructive. This evidence, coupled with the fact that task-switching hinders one’s short-term memory shows that students academic performance can be hindered by technological and moreover, social media