My theory for this project was that students that access social media at least 4 times a day have lower grades than students that access social media less than 2 times a day. I used this because I realize that social media can be a major hinderance and can distract students from completing their schoolwork. I am a prime example of this. Before I created any social networking accounts, I had straight A’s and had much more free time than I knew what to do with. Now however, I use social media frequently and it has eaten up my time and concentration. I began to complete my homework at school in the mornings before classes because I concluded that talking to my “friends” and seeing who was posting what was more important than my schoolwork. This behavior began to cause my grades to plummet. Realizing what I was doing to myself, I decided to make a change. I do not check my social networking accounts as much as I used to and my grades reflect it!
After long contemplation, I realized that I couldn’t be the only one that had this horrible habit of putting social media before education; someone else absolutely had to do it as well. I had many questions in my head about why such a thing would happen with others. “Do they do it because of boredom? What if they focus more on it because their friends do?” After testing 30 students at Frederick Douglass High School with the amount of time spent on social media as the independent variable and the condition of the grades as a result being the dependent variable, I found my theory to be correct. The more these students used social media, the lower their grades were. They reported that they spent time completing homework at school, spent more time on social media than they did completing schoolwork, and that they try to cram in work at the end of each quarter to try to bring their grades up. They also reported that they only made a social networking account because their friends had one. I have found that our peers have a major influence on our behaviors as human beings.