Down the online rabbit hole: Students find social media to be detrimental to academic performance

Graphic by Emily Wu

Social media can shorten students’ attention span and hinder their academic performance.

According to a study by Gallup News, teenagers are now spending an average of 4.8 hours on social media daily, taking up 20% of the day on “infinite scrolling.” For many high schoolers, this means procrastinating on important assignments and not preparing for upcoming exams — despite increasingly heavy workloads. 

“Sometimes I wonder: ‘Where did all of my time go?’” sophomore Max Rombakh said.  “And the answer is inevitably some semblance of unuseful technology, whether it be social media or video games.”

Rombakh recalled that in the months leading up to his 2023 AP exams, he constantly found himself distracted and mindlessly scrolling through Discord, a popular messaging platform, as he chatted with his friends for hours. Rombakh believes that the addictive designs of social media platforms — such as Discord, Instagram and Snapchat — are impediments to students achieving their goals in life. 

“At one point, I realized that I had wasted three hours of my afternoon mere weeks before AP exams,” Rombakh said. “That was a strong dose of reality, and I made an effort to stay away from social media for those few weeks and onwards.”

A study conducted by Pew Research Center indicates that nearly half of U.S. teens check social media almost constantly — teens pick up their phones an average of 100 times daily, even while working on other tasks, a multitasking approach that often leads to poor productivity.

Social media algorithms are designed to keep users hooked — and SHS students are no exception

The addictiveness of social media is often attributed to its ability to decrease attention span. In 2017, founding president of Facebook Sean Parker admitted that the platform is designed to intentionally hook users through feedback loops that stimulate them with dopamine, a “feel-good” chemical that gradually reinforces their need for it. These surges of dopamine are what prompt social media users to feel a burst of excitement when receiving a notification; researchers have found that they are a key factor in developing a cycle of social media addiction.

Sophomore Jeffrey Wang believes that social media doesn’t actually benefit users’ quality of life; in fact, he finds that its only purpose is to entertain for short periods of time, during which it gives a sense of satisfaction.

“Social media is a huge waste of time — ultimately, the content often brings nothing to me at all,” Wang said. “Despite it being so empty and brainless, however, there’s just something about it that makes it feel so good. For me, it’s the feeling of vicarious pleasure that I can derive without putting in any effort myself. That’s why I’m often compelled while doing homework to pull out my phone and go through different social media apps.”

A study published in the Journal of the World Psychiatric Association found that 75% of on-screen content was viewed for less than a minute and that mental stimulation increased in the time period before the user switched to a social media platform and reached a high at the moment of the switch. 

Teens like Wang find that the addictive nature of social media constantly draws users searching for a quick break back to their screens. By design, many social media platforms make these “quick breaks” last much longer than a few minutes. 

By the time that an average student graduates from high school, having spent 4.8 hours a day on average from the ages 13-18, they will have spent at least 10,512 hours on social media — which is time lost from academics, hobbies and skill-building. 

According to a poll advertised on The Falcon’s Instagram story, 33% of Saratoga High students reported using social media for two hours daily, while 32% of students used Instagram for more than three hours daily. 66% of respondents on Instagram reported that they use Instagram more than any other platform.

Senior Jarrett Singh is one of many students who struggle to keep their social media screen time under control while doing homework. When Singh promises himself that he will only take a 10-minute break by going on social media, he often finds himself unintentionally spending nearly an hour on them.

“Ten minutes on social media is never really 10 minutes,” Singh said. “Ten minutes turns into 20; 20 into 30; 30 into 60; eventually you’ll be up at 1 a.m. with barely any work done.” 

Students find that certain social media platforms hinder academic performance

Another negative cognitive effect of social media on students is its ability to create memory deficiencies — in particular, episodic memory, the ability to encode and retrieve personal experiences. According to researchers Bradford Dickerson and Howard Eichenbaum, the abundance of information that can be found instantly on social media can alter the process that determines which memories are retained. 

For example, in a study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, researchers found that those who post about their attendance of an event on social media did an average of 10% worse on memory tests about the experience than those who did.

Frequent social media usage can also damage users’ critical thinking capabilities: A study conducted by the University of Waterloo found that analytical thinkers — people with higher cognitive capacities according to the Cognitive Reflection Test — relied on their phone less for information in their day-to-day lives, compared to individuals with non‐analytical thinking styles. 

In Wang’s case, after spending an hour on Snapchat the tutorial before taking an AP Calculus BC test, he suffered a lapse in judgment on his math test and forgot to do the entire last page. He feels that the time he spent on Snapchat was directly detrimental to his ability to concentrate during the test.

On the other hand, Wang acknowledges that other social media platforms like Instagram can be beneficial for learning. He hopes to someday pursue a career as a  sports analyst, and he uses Instagram to keep track of team rankings and scores.

“I often find projects in my For You page that are useful,” Wang said. “Once, I applied one of the machine learning algorithms [that I saw online] to an economy project I was working on, and I was extremely impressed by the results.”

On the whole, however, Wang thinks most platforms like TikTok and Snapchat are not conducive to his academics. He recalls spending around 3.5 hours per day on said platforms, much of which was not productive.

“Looking back over 2023, what I ultimately felt was immense regret at how I spent too much time on the social media platforms TikTok and Snapchat,” Wang said. “They were both a waste of time — a major inhibition to the things that I wanted to do.” 

Students seek strategies to limit social media screen time 

Rombakh advocates for cutting back from social media significantly or even totally. The results can include better academics as a result of reduced distractions, better memory and sharper critical thinking. Students will no longer feel the constant, nagging urge to click on eye-catching red notifications, Rombakh said. 

One way for students to improve work efficiency and alleviate social media addiction, according to EDP sciences, is to regularly go outside and be exposed to fresh air. Rombakh added that, in order to study better, setting personal guidelines and committing to them is very important. “After realizing how much time I spent on these online platforms, I installed a few Chrome extensions, for example Unhook and BlockSite, to keep me from being distracted by websites like YouTube,” Rombakh said. “Since then, I’ve found so much more time to dedicate to my other passions.”