Internet and College Students Time Management

The Effects of Internet in College Students Study Time Management
Aniris M. Fernandez
Towson University

Abstract
The study time management skills of college students are very poor due to the addiction teenagers are confronting with Internet and social network sites. This problem is affecting their capacity to organize themselves and as a consequence grades are dropping. Experts are analyzing and studying the way in which students are using the Internet and its social networks and many of the results of these experiments are definitely not good. They have made studies about Internet addictive behavior and the problematic use that college students are facing with the Internet. Social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc. are one of the main problems against the time management skills of college students. One of the negative points of technology is that there is no way to control it once a person has reached the level of university. But, schools should prepare the students for this type of environment by teaching them study skills and how to work with their time management. Many college students have reached the point in which they cannot control themselves when it comes to the use of Internet; it’s becoming an addictive behavior

The Effects of Internet in College Students Study Time Management
Introduction
In the world today, Internet use is the most common thing between human beings. It’s used for anything needed, from academic purposes to a picture search to any insignificant or funny fact we want to search for. Internet nowadays is such a broad environment to search for that college students are going through a phase in which they don’t know how to use it wisely. This environment is affecting their study time management and because of this their academic performance is dropping. Social networks have a big performance in this situation also, since people spend too much time in social networks and the time used here is time that they don’t have to study.
Self-control and Addictive Behaviors Towards Internet
The number one problem that university students have with their time management is Internet addictive behavior and problematic Internet use. There was a study made with university students to inquire information of whether the levels of problematic Internet use differ from the basic Internet use purposes. In this study 411 university students were tested, 52.30% were females and 47.70% were males (Ceyhan, 2011). The measure used for this investigation was the Problematic Internet Use Scale, which consists of 33 items and produces scores between 33 and 165, the higher scores mean unhealthy Internet use of individuals and demonstrate that their lives are negatively influenced and that they could have a tendency towards such pathology as Internet addiction (Ceyhan, 2011). It also consists of an information questionnaire developed to obtain demographic information about participants and their Internet use behavior (Ceyhan, 2011). After this study was made, it was found that university students’ levels of problematic internet use for the basic purpose of obtaining information were significantly lower than that of those who used the internet primarily to establish social relationships with unfamiliar people and those who used the internet primarily for entertainment (Ceyhan, 2011). This demonstrates that those students who use the Internet more for social things and for entertainment rather than for the purpose of obtaining information waste time for study, which leads to time management problems.
Behaviors like these ones are the ones that are considered as an Internet addictive behavior. There is a study that was made with a Chinese Internet Addiction Scale, which measures the addiction of students towards Internet addiction. In this study seventy-six students were tested, in which the mean age was 19, 71% of the participants were male, and they spent 3.27 hours per day using the internet on average (Chung & Li, 2006). This scale consists of five subscales: compulsive use, withdrawal, tolerance, time management problem, and interpersonal and health problems (Chung & Li, 2006). The results of the study said that males used the Internet longer than females, they had more problematic Internet addictive behaviors than women, which means that they have more time management, interpersonal and health problems (Chung & Li, 2006).
As it is established in the last two studies mentioned above the problem of Internet addiction and self-control on college students is more common than what people might think. Students have a problem controlling themselves with what they are going to use the Internet for.
Such abuse is a predictable outcome of the fact that most college students: are provided free and unlimited Internet access by their colleges, have large blocks of unstructured time as a result of their class schedules, experience an unrestrained freedom from the control of parents or other authority figures, may often be alienated by the impersonal nature f the college environment, and are often denied other forms of interaction by virtueof a drinking age set at 21 (Englander, Terregrossa, & Wang, 2010, p.86).
This leads us to one of the main problems of Internet addiction, which are the social networks that exist nowadays. “Many studies have concluded that excessive Internet use may lead to a variety of psychological, educational, or social problems” (Tzeng, 2010, p.495). It has also been proposed that spending a lot of time in the Internet is not the problem, but rather the specific activities in which the students engage while on the Internet is what really matters (Tzeng, 2010).
The Effect of the Social Networks on Studies
Most of the times students spend on the Internet are concentrated in social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and so on. A recent study has demonstrated that from the 350 million active users of Facebook, 50% of active users log onto FB in any given day with more than 8 billion minutes spent on the website worldwide each day (Kirschner & Karpinski, 2010). The study was made with data collected from 102 undergraduate and 117 graduate students; the sample consisted of 87 male participants and 132 female participants (Kirschner & Karpinski, 2010). Participants were predominantly traditional college students with 46.6% of undergraduate and 53.4% of graduate students having a mean age of approximately 22.06 and 30.29, respectively (Kirschner & Karpinski, 2010). Three factors were included in the investigation: Facebook use, student status (undergraduate or graduate), and university major (Kirschner & Karpinski, 2010). The result of this study was that Facebook users reported both a lower mean GPA and spending fewer hours per week studying on average than Facebook nonusers, though the amount of total time spent on the Internet did not differ between the groups (Kirschner & Karpinski, 2010).
Approximately 10–15% of the study participants reported feeling not being in complete control of their Internet use, and that it has hurt their schoolwork (Kirschner & Karpinski, 2010). Students who reported Internet caused schoolwork problems were found to have spent five times more hours online than those who did not, and they were also significantly more likely to report that their Internet use caused them to stay up late, get less sleep, and miss classes (Kirschner & Karpinski, 2010).
“Students who use Facebook and hit the books simultaneously found their multitasking led to 20% lower grades than those of their more focused peers,” (O’ Dell, 2011, p.1). “With around 96% of all college students on Facebook, only the most dedicated academics would consider giving up social media for a slightly better GPA,” (O’ Dell, 2011, p.1). With these studies, it is clear that Facebook and other social networks take time from study time and it affects academic performance, which is reflected on the GPA. As everything in life, these social networks have the positive things and negative things, but the negative part of it affects in great deal one of the most important things in life, college students’ academics.
Conclusion
Even though all these studies and investigations have shown that addictive internet behavior, lack of self-control with internet, and social networks are negative to college students’ study time, not all that has to do with internet is bad. These factors can mess with the academic performance of college students but it also has the positive things that help students a lot. Through Internet people find a lot of reliable information needed for classes or just for knowledge. For example, media-savvy students have come to expect that content can be delivered to them through networks like Twitter and Facebook (Berner, 2011). Most of college students don’t check their e-mails as much as they check Facebook, so it’s more reliable to use Facebook as a source to find someone if you need anything than e-mailing them. Internet is so integrated in our lives that it’s no surprise that one of three college students consider the Internet to be as important as human resources such as air, water, food and shelter, according to the second annual Cisco Connected World Technology Report (Berner, 2011). The important thing about Internet is knowing how to control oneself, organize, and use it wisely when it comes to study time.

References
Berner, M. (2011). Report finds 1 in 3 college students believe internet to be as important as air and water. The Daily Orange. Retrieved from http://www.dailyorange.com/news/report-finds-1-in-3-college-students-believe-internet-to-be-as-important-as-air-water-1.2633079#.Tpz4netgsXx.
Ceyhan, A. (2011). University students ' problematic internet use and communication skills according to the internet use purposes. Educational Sciences: Theory & Practice, 11(1), 69-77.
Englander, F., Terregrossa, R. A., & Wang, Z. (2010). Internet use among college students: Tool or toy? Educational Review, 62(1), 85-96. doi:10.1080/00131910903519793.
Jeng-Yi, T. (2010). College students ' self-discrepancy on the internet, from the perspectives of desktop practices, self-control, and academic training. CyberPsychology, Behavior & Social Networking, 13(5), 495-502. doi:10.1089/cyber.2009.0247.
Jones, S. (2002). The internet goes to college: How students are living in the future with today 's technology. Washington D.C.: Pew Internet & American Life Project.
Kirschner, P./ & Karpinski, A.C. (2010). Facebook and academic performance. Computers in Human Behavior, volume(issue), page numbers.. doi: 10.1016/j.chb.2010.03.024
Li, S., & Chung, T. (2006). Internet function and internet addictive behavior. Computers in Human Behavior, 22(6), 1067-1071. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2004.03.030.
Massimini, M., & Peerson, M. (2009). Information and communication technology: Affects on U.S. college students. Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace, 3(1). Retrieved from http://www.cyberpsychology.eu/view.php?cisloclanku=2009061503&article=1.
Mokhtari, K., Reichard, C. A., & Gardner, A. (2009). The impact of internet and television use on the reading habits and practices of college students. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 52(7), 609-619.
O 'Dell, J. (2011). For students, what is the "Facebook effect" on grades? Retrieved from http://mashable.com/2011/04/27/facebook-effect-students/#comments.

References: Berner, M. (2011). Report finds 1 in 3 college students believe internet to be as important as air and water. The Daily Orange. Retrieved from http://www.dailyorange.com/news/report-finds-1-in-3-college-students-believe-internet-to-be-as-important-as-air-water-1.2633079#.Tpz4netgsXx. Ceyhan, A. (2011). University students ' problematic internet use and communication skills according to the internet use purposes. Educational Sciences: Theory & Practice, 11(1), 69-77. Englander, F., Terregrossa, R. A., & Wang, Z. (2010). Internet use among college students: Tool or toy? Educational Review,  62(1), 85-96. doi:10.1080/00131910903519793. Jeng-Yi, T. (2010). College students ' self-discrepancy on the internet, from the perspectives of desktop practices, self-control, and academic training. CyberPsychology, Behavior & Social Networking, 13(5), 495-502. doi:10.1089/cyber.2009.0247. Jones, S. (2002). The internet goes to college: How students are living in the future with today 's technology. Washington D.C.: Pew Internet & American Life Project. Kirschner, P./ & Karpinski, A.C. (2010). Facebook and academic performance. Computers in Human Behavior, volume(issue), page numbers.. doi:  10.1016/j.chb.2010.03.024 Li, S., & Chung, T. (2006). Internet function and internet addictive behavior. Computers in Human Behavior, 22(6), 1067-1071.  doi:10.1016/j.chb.2004.03.030. Massimini, M., & Peerson, M. (2009). Information and communication technology: Affects on U.S. college students.  Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace, 3(1). Retrieved from http://www.cyberpsychology.eu/view.php?cisloclanku=2009061503&article=1. Mokhtari, K., Reichard, C. A., & Gardner, A. (2009). The impact of internet and television use on the reading habits and practices of college students. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 52(7), 609-619. O 'Dell, J. (2011). For students, what is the "Facebook effect" on grades? Retrieved from http://mashable.com/2011/04/27/facebook-effect-students/#comments.